


Complications

by radiofreekerberos



Series: The Big Sick [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Suicide, Big angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Keith (Voltron) Whump, M/M, Major Illness, Panic Attacks, SHEITH - Freeform, Sad Shiro (Voltron), Shiro (Voltron) Has PTSD - Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Shiro (Voltron) emotional whump, Sick Keith (Voltron), Sickfic, Whump Fic, domestic sheith, war veteran Keith, war veteran Shiro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-01-16 07:51:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 21,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12338508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiofreekerberos/pseuds/radiofreekerberos
Summary: “It’s okay, you’re okay,” Shiro says, smiling despite the fact that Keith is clearly anything but. He gives Keith’s cold clammy hand a reassuring squeeze and glances at Lance, whose face is scrunched up in a tight frown.Or, the one where Keith contracts a serious illness that leaves his life hanging in the balance, and Shiro facing the possibility of losing the love of his life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I like sickfic, so sue me.

“Honey, I’m home!” Shiro calls out, dumping his suitcase in the den the moment he strides through the door. He expects Keith will come stalking down the stairs at any moment, his face buried in a textbook. 

“Don’t call me honey,” he’ll grumble, as Shiro pulls him into a hug and plants a kiss on his dark head. Keith will flash a reluctant smile and melt against Shiro’s chest. 

Shiro will carefully take the book out of Keith’s hand and kiss the crease that’s formed between his eyes from having his face buried in a book for the last three days, and Keith will roll his eyes. 

Shiro will chuckle before kissing him again, on the lips. 

“It’s good to have you back,” Keith will say, his hand caressing Shiro’s face. 

“It’s good to be back,” Shiro will answer, covering Keith’s hand in his.

The thought makes Shiro smile, even if he is a little disappointed when Keith doesn’t appear.

“Keith?” he calls, his brow knitting absently as he makes his way to the kitchen. “You home?” There’s no answer. He grabs a bottle of water from the fridge and downs half of it, pulling a face while contemplating the seemingly empty flat. Funny that, Keith has this thing about never letting Shiro come home to an empty house. Shiro thinks it must be the unintended result of a neglected childhood. Keith simply can’t abide the thought of anyone feeling as alone as he once did, especially Shiro. 

Shiro checks his watch, he’s a little later than he thought he’d be getting in from the exoport, but Keith should’ve been prepared for that after tracking his virtual flight information. Maybe he ran out for something Shiro thinks, and inadvertently got caught in traffic on the way back, although his hover bike is parked in the driveway. He might’ve caught the bus, which he did sometimes when he didn't feel like dealing with traffic. It wouldn’t be the first time the Mission District busses were running behind schedule, except his keys are still hanging on the cork board next to the fridge and his transit pass is attached to them.

Shiro pulls a face and heads back into the den. He grabs his suitcase before heading to the bedroom they both share. The one with the big bay window at the front of the house. Maybe that’s where Keith is, hopefully resting. He’d been complaining of a headache on their Skype call last night. Shiro had been concerned about how pale and tired he’d looked, and the dark circles under his eyes were even more pronounced than usual. 

_“You’re working yourself too hard,” he’d said, but Keith had only frowned dismissively._

_“Hey, I’ve got a three year plan remember? I’m gonna graduate this year or-”_

_“-Or what?” Shiro asked, one eyebrow quirking skeptically. “Die trying? It’s okay to take it easy every once in a while you know, in fact it’s recommended. Take a frigging nap sometime. I hear naps are awesome.”_

_Keith pulled a face. “Is that what the kids who sleep through your class tell you?” he’d wryly asked, wincing slightly as he’d massaged his neck._

_“Just the ones not streaming Netflix,” Shiro deadpanned._

_Keith rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said, “I’ll sleep in tomorrow. Happy now?”_

_“It’s a start,” Shiro said with a pointed look that let Keith know the sore muscles he was trying to conceal hadn’t gone unnoticed, “provided you actually follow through.”_

_“You’re a classy lady Mom,” Keith muttered testily._

_“And you’re a pain in the ass Sodapop,” Shiro grumbled back._

_Keith had scowled at him, though there wasn’t any real heat behind it. “But you love me anyway,” he said, one side of his mouth slowly quirking into a wan half-smile._

_“More than Godzilla loves Rodan,” Shiro said wryly._

_“Nope, try again,” Keith muttered, shaking his head._

_“More than Godzilla loves Mothra?”_

_“Aren’t those guys like Godzilla’s greatest enemies, or whatever,” Keith frowned, impatiently drumming his fingers on the desk._

_“It’s subtext Keith,” Shiro said, “obviously.”_

_“I love that you honestly don’t care what a huge dork you are,” Keith said, the smile slowly creeping back onto his face._

_“Come on,” Shiro said softly, “don’t you know how much you mean to me by now?”_

_Keith’s smile brightened. “Miss you,” he’d said._

_“Miss you too, now go, take some aspirin and get to bed. I’ll be home tomorrow night.”_

_“I’ll be here.”_

Shiro frowns slightly at the empty bedroom. He deposits his suitcase on the bed, but doesn’t open it. There isn’t much to unpack, just a couple of pairs of jeans, a few henley shirts and some toiletries. The education conference had been a three day Las Vegas affair. It was viciously hot, but the hotel where he and his fellow instructors had been staying was cool enough to warrant long sleeves. Thankfully Shiro wasn’t too uncomfortable keeping his battle scars and artificial arm hidden from view. 

Annual conferences aside, Shiro enjoys being a civilian again. Keith’s shoulder wound had meant a medical discharge from the Space Corps, just as the loss of an arm had for Shiro. They were both collecting a small military pension in addition to Shiro’s salary. It wasn’t much, but it had allowed Keith to return to school. After he and Keith had relocated to San Francisco Shiro put his Degree in Astrophysics to use by taking a teaching position at San Francisco State University. It’s where Keith attends classes as well.

Shiro knows Keith feels guilty about him being their sole source of income right now, hence the whole “three year plan” to graduate and get a job as soon as possible so he can start contributing to the household expenses thing, but honestly Shiro doesn’t mind. He likes that he’s able to do this for Keith, the person he loves more than anything in the world.

The bed doesn’t look like it’s been slept in. 

“Keith!” Shiro calls again. He’s starting to get worried now. He heads out into the hallway and up the stairs and notices that the bathroom door is shut. “Keith? You in there?” he calls, from the staircase. There’s no answer. He stands outside the door and breathes a sigh of relief when he hears the shower running. “Little late for a shower isn’t it?” he says, knocking lightly on the door. Keith doesn’t answer. “Keith?” The door isn’t locked. The knob turns easily in Shiro’s hand. He knocks again as he pushes the door open and steps into the room. “Did your headache go…”

They have one of those old-fashioned clawfoot tubs. The water is running and Keith is sprawled fully clothed at the bottom of it. 

“Keith!” Shiro cries, dropping to his knees beside the tub. The water is ice cold when he turns it off. He thinks it may have been running all night. Fortunately the stopper hadn’t been pulled, or Keith might have drowned. “Keith? Keith? Keith!” Shiro babbles, lifting Keith’s dripping body from the tub. His eyes are half-open, though they don’t seem to be focused on anything in particular. Livid purple bruises stand out on his ashen face and neck and his skin is hot, too hot, dangerously hot.

“God, you’re burning up,” Shiro breathes, brushing the dripping hair from Keith’s eyes. Keith groans softly, bonelessly sagging in Shiro’s grip. His head lolls forward, his burning forehead resting in the nape of Shiro’s neck. His breathing is labored, coming in short shallow gasps. Shiro presses his fingers to the pulse at Keith’s throat. His heart is racing. “Keith, look at me Babe,” Shiro demands tensely. “Tell me what’s going on.”

Bleary violet irises slowly slide to Shiro’s face. “My… head,” Keith whispers breathlessly, his voice like sandpaper. He shudders and gags, his blotchy skin turning even paler than it already is. Shiro quickly hauls him out of the tub. 

Icy water falls in cascading sheets from Keith’s limp body and soaks into the tile floor. Shiro kneels behind him, his artificial arm wrapped around Keith’s chest, keeping him upright as he urgently vomits milky brown liquid into the toilet. More pinprick like bruises cover Keith’s trembling arms, crawling past the short sleeves of his soaked tee shirt. His retches become dry heaves. “My head is splitting,” he groans, cradling his head in shaking hands. His groans turn to agitated keening as he writhes lethargically in Shiro’s arms. Shiro hastily reaches into his back pocket for his phone and dials 9-1-1…

***

“How old is he?” The lanky EMT deftly inserting the IV catheter into Keith’s arm asks. According to his uniform badge, his name is Lance. He’d arrived with the ambulance in just under three minutes thanks to pretty much every emergency vehicle being anti-grav these days. They glide through the air in specially designated emergency flight lanes built miles above the slower terrestrial traffic lanes below.

“Twenty-one,” Shiro says, tensely eyeing Keith as he writhes on the gurney, groaning in obvious pain. His eyelids flutter as he slips in and out of consciousness. He fights Lance’s ministrations, heedlessly ripping away the sensors and medical lines almost as fast as Lance can connect them. “Can’t you give him something for the pain?” Shiro asks. He anxiously captures Keith’s cold hands in his, and Lance shoots him a brief but distracted look of gratitude.

Lance quickly enters information on the virtual screen between them. “Sorry,” he says, and it even sounds like he really means it, “I can’t administer anything until we know what’s going on with him,” to Keith he says, “okay buddy,” and gives Keith’s fitfully rising chest a reassuring pat, “I need you to hang in there for me for a few more minutes. We’re gonna be at the hospital real soon.” Keith whimpers. His eyes open to violet slits, but he immediately screws them shut again as if the bright white lights illuminating the medical compartment are causing him further pain. Lance passes a thermometer over his head and enters the results onto the screen. “Any pre-existing conditions we should know about?” he asks Shiro.

“Uh,” Shiro thinks for a minute, finding the blips and beeps from the various monitor wires Lance is methodically attaching to different areas of Keith’s body distracting. “He had a shoulder replacement a year ago,” he says finally.

“Standard, or Galra tech?”

“Galra tech,” at this point Shiro’s lived with an artificial limb long enough to know the difference. Galra replacement equals nerve involvement and a permanent graft to the skin. Advancements in medical technology were one of the few good things to come out of the war, though anything Galra related is still viewed with a certain amount of suspicion by Earth’s medical establishment. Robotic limb replacement is only available to wounded ex-servicemen at the moment, mostly as a reward for their service, but also because the Authority is more comfortable with making guinea pigs out of soldiers than civilians.

“Okay,” Lance says, updating the screen. “Is he taking any medications?”

“No… I mean, he might’ve taken an aspirin last night,” Shiro shrugs. He runs his artificial fingers through Keith’s still wet hair. He’d barely had time to get him bundled into some dry clothes before the ambulance had arrived. He’d just snatched the first things off the top of the clean laundry pile, which happened to be his own black hoodie and a pair of Keith’s sweatpants. Keith’s compact body is lost inside the hoodie. At any other moment, Shiro might have found that amusing, but now all he can think is how small and unexpectedly helpless Keith looks laying on the gurney in Shiro’s oversized clothes.

“Aspirin,” Lance mutters to himself, “got it.” He rakes his knuckles across Keith’s chest, “Keith?” Lance says loudly, “Can you hear me buddy?” Keith whimpers softly. Sluggish tears slowly slide down his face from beneath his closed eyelids. Shiro wipes them away and kisses his burning forehead, though it does little to calm Keith’s agitated thrashing. “We’re gonna get you some help real soon okay?” Lance says. He wraps a blood pressure cuff around Keith’s arm and calmly presses a stethoscope to his pulse. “Any drug allergies?” he asks Shiro.

“Uh…Penicillin,” Shiro says his voice quavering. It’s a common allergy among Earth’s Galra population. They’d begun arriving hundreds of years earlier, refugees fleeing an intergalactic civil war that no one ever thought would extend as far as the Earth. The Galra were just one of a handful of displaced alien species that now called the planet home. Earth’s human and alien populations had been coexisting and integrating with each other for generations. As a result about ten percent of the planet’s population is now of mixed alien and human blood.

Earth’s Galra refugees had been invaluable assets during the war, whether full-blooded or of mixed heritage like Keith. Most of them possessed the ability to manipulate Galra tech, which made them uniquely suited for undercover missions, though after Shiro’s capture, Keith’s team had specialized in sabotage. Even so, memories of the war are still fresh in people’s minds and most of the human populace has become highly suspicious of its Galra citizenry, despite their long uneventful residence before the war, and their service to the planet during it.

Keith shivers and startles back to full consciousness, his big glassy eyes opening wide. His pupils are completely blown, huge and black. Shiro quietly freaks out, because he knows Keith hasn’t been given anything that would cause that. There’s a look of utter panic on Keith’s pallid face. His head jerks wildly as he takes in his surroundings with a wild-eyed stare that eventually settles on Shiro’s face. “Shro?” he slurs.

“It’s okay, you’re okay,” Shiro says, smiling despite the fact that Keith is clearly anything but. He gives Keith’s cold clammy hand a reassuring squeeze and glances at Lance, whose face is scrunched up in a tight frown.

Keith’s eyes abruptly roll back into his head amid a sudden cacophony of blaring monitor alarms. His back arches off the gurney as his body seizes in a violent fit of convulsions. “Keith!” Shiro cries, springing forward.

“Shit!” Lance grunts.

“What’s happening?” Shiro demands, panic rising in his chest. He’s afraid to let go of Keith’s spasming hand. “What’s happening to him?” 

Lance glances at him, his jaw clenched in a grim line. “Please just sit back down and let me work,” he says, springing to his feet. Reluctantly Shiro pulls away, letting go of Keith’s twitching hand and leaning back against the hard metal seat built into the medical compartment’s wall. 

Lance gives the wall separating them from the driver’s compartment a couple of quick raps. “Hey, we need to step on it this guy’s crashing!” He pulls open a drawer and plucks a sterile pack out of it. The wall between the compartments shimmers and goes opaque, revealing a Galra drone soldier at the flight controls. Shiro startles at the sight of it, goosebumps rising on his skin. He’s heard that they’ve started refurbishing decommissioned drones for service jobs like these, but this is the first time he’s seen one this closeup since the war. 

The drone’s head turns, regarding Lance with a single glowing red eye as he empties a syringe filled with milky-white medication into the taped catheter in Keith’s arm. “Don’t just sit there looking at me you bucket of bolts!” Lance snaps at it, “Get a move on!”

Keith is still convulsing when they arrive at the hospital less than a minute later. Shiro doesn’t know what to do with himself. The longer it goes on, the more helpless he feels. His hands are clenched so tightly, they’re shaking. Lance hops down from the hovering ambulance as soon as the cargo hatch opens. A small army of medical personnel wearing various colored scrubs come rushing out to meet him. Lance activates the anti-grav thrusters on the gurney and eases it down the ramp into their waiting arms. 

Everyone seems to be talking at once, or maybe not everyone. A young Altean woman with striking platinum hair, wearing lavender scrubs seems to be in charge. She and Lance quickly exchange information, most of it pertaining to medical history and administered medications. She consults the virtual screen attached to the gurney as they all rush off towards the automatic glass doors leading to the ER. 

Shiro takes off after them, casting a glance over his shoulder at the Galra drone still seated at the flight controls behind him. The thing is staring at him with its single glowing eye. Shiro shudders, icy fingers crawling up his spine as he bursts through the sliding doors. 

He follows after the knot of brightly colored scrubs accompanying the hovering gurney all the way down a brightly lit corridor. They turn the corner ahead of him and he abruptly pulls up short, practically colliding head on with a big guy wearing mustard yellow scrubs in his haste to catch up. 

He’s just about Shiro’s height and easily twice as wide. Shiro tries to step around him, but the guy’s planted himself firmly in Shiro’s path. Medical equipment and the Nurse’s station desk block his way on either side. Shiro strains to see past the guy’s shoulder and catches sight of the gurney holding Keith’s seizing body being slipped into a room amid a flurry of scrambling medical personnel.

“You are?” Mustard scrubs asks. There isn’t a particular tone attached to the question. Just the look of deep bone weariness that comes from someone who’s spent countless hours on his feet witnessing the suffering of others. Shiro recognizes that look. He sometimes sees it staring back at him from the mirror in the morning.

His eyes stray to the ID badge hanging from a cord around the guy’s neck. Hunk it says, and there’s an RN next to the name. It’s a weird name, Shiro thinks, but whatever. He holds up his left hand and points to the gold band on his ring finger. “Husband,” he says simply.

Hunk nods once. “Waiting room’s that way,” he says, pointing to the mostly empty room immediately off to Shiro’s left…

***

“Mr. Shirogane?”

Shiro looks up from his tightly clasped hands to find the Altean doctor with the platinum hair looking down at him from the doorway. He’s lost track of how long he’s been sitting in the dreary steel colored waiting room. Long enough for his damp clothes to dry. Long enough for the giant televid screen hovering in the middle of the room, its angle changing automatically depending on the viewer’s seat, to switch programs. 

“Yes,” he says, immediately springing to his feet.

The young doctor smiles wearily, her uniquely faceted turquoise eyes sparkling in the subdued light. “Please,” she says indicating the seat Shiro just vacated with a sweep of her hand. He sits down on the edge of it, one leg bouncing nervously. She takes the seat next to him. “I’m Allura, the doctor assigned to your husband’s case,” she says, extending her hand. Shiro briefly grips it with his artificial fingers. “We were able to stop the seizure and stabilize his condition.”

“Thank you,” Shiro says, sighing briefly with relief. “What’s…” he hesitates, licking his dry lips, “do you know what’s happened to him?” He can’t tell how worried he should be from the doctor’s face. Her words sound reassuring, but her tone is making the skin on the back of Shiro’s neck crawl with apprehension.

“We suspect bacterial meningitis,” she says calmly, “but we’ll need to perform some tests to be certain.”

“Meningitis,” Shiro says, “is that? How serious is that?”

“Well, I won’t lie to you,” the doctor sighs, “it would have been better if we’d caught it earlier. I’m afraid your husband is a very ill young man.”

Shiro’s heart sinks. It’s his fault. He should’ve known something was wrong last night on their call. Keith had looked so exhausted, and the headache, Shiro can’t recall the last time Keith’s had a headache, or if he’s ever had one. He should’ve gotten an earlier flight back. He should’ve insisted that Keith see a doctor. He should’ve… done something. 

“I was away at a conference,” Shiro murmurs almost to himself, “I wasn’t there when he needed me.”

Allura’s brow knits in sympathy as she pats Shiro’s hand. “Meningitis can be tricky,” she says kindly. “The symptoms often come on very suddenly. Even if you’d been with him it’s likely he would’ve been just as ill by the time you got him here.”

Shiro appreciates her efforts to comfort him, but he knows she’s just trying to spare his feelings. He keeps picturing Keith waking up in the middle of the night, in pain and delirious with fever. Maybe he’d been looking for Shiro, calling out for him before his fever muddled brain had finally registered that he was alone. Desperate for some kind of relief, he’d stumbled into the bathroom, managing to turn on the shower before his strength gave out and he’d fallen into the tub. None of that would’ve happened if Shiro had been there, and Keith would've gotten the medical help he’d needed hours sooner.

“He’s a student, is that correct?” Allura asks, and Shiro nods.

“At SF State,” he says. “Why?”

“Health Services will need to be notified,” she says. “I understand you’re on the faculty there as well?”

“Yes,” Shiro says, his brow knitting slightly in confusion. “You think he picked it up at school?”

The doctor shrugs. “College campuses _can_ be prone to periodic outbreaks of infectious disease,” she says. “There’s a possibility that more cases will be brought in. Has he been to any parties lately?”

“No,” Shiro says simply, any other day and a question like that might have struck him as funny. “Parties aren’t really Keith’s thing,” he says. 

“Well, we’ll need to vaccinate you before you leave, just to be on the safe side,” she says.

“Is he going to be all right?” Shiro finally asks, half dreading the answer.

“He’s young and otherwise healthy,” Allura says with an explosive sigh. “We’ve already started him on a course of broad-spectrum antibiotics suitable to Galra physiology. If he responds well to treatment, then there’s no reason to think he shouldn’t make a full recovery. I’m cautiously optimistic.” She smiles and pats Shiro’s bouncing leg. “He’s also awake and asking for you, which is a good sign.”

“Am I allowed to see him?” Shiro asks.

“We’re going to be moving him downstairs for some tests in a few minutes, but yes,” she nods, “you can see him for a moment before he goes. Just for a moment though,” she cautions. “You’ll be able to visit later after we’ve admitted him and moved him to his own room.”

She stands and Shiro follows her out into the corridor. Hunk is standing at the nurse’s station directly across from the opaque treatment room where Keith is laying, pale and silent in a slightly raised hospital bed. Shiro looks at him through the glass walls as the doctor leads him through the open doorway. “A technician will be up in a moment,” Allura says, from the doorway, “you can stay with him until then.” With that she smiles and slips away, Shiro assumes to check on other patients.

Shiro swallows, momentarily frozen in place. Keith’s bruised eyelids are closed and his face is pinched in an uncomfortable looking frown. He’s no longer writhing in pain, but Shiro wonders if that’s due to medication, or exhaustion. One of the nurses has removed Shiro’s hoodie, leaving Keith naked from the waist up. There’s a light blue blanket covering his legs and electrodes have been attached to his forehead and mottled chest. He’s surrounded by bleating virtual monitor screens, seemingly measuring everything from pulse rate to brainwave activity. His breathing is shallow and uneven. An oxygen tube has been placed in his nose and separate IV lines, one in his arm and one in the space between his collarbone and his neck, are slowly dripping medications and fluids into his body. 

Shiro anxiously presses his lips together and slowly approaches the bed, his flesh and blood fingers wrapping around one of Keith’s cold hands.

Keith stirs. He slowly opens his eyes, and eventually focuses on Shiro’s face. “Hey,” Shiro says, trying his best to smile as Keith slowly blinks at him. His pupils are hugely dilated. Shiro tries not to panic, telling himself that it’s likely due to medication this time and not illness.

“Umm sorry,” Keith murmurs, his words slurred and his voice thick with fatigue. He grimaces and awkwardly licks his lips, as if his tongue has somehow become too big for his mouth.

“For what?” Shiro asks, gently caressing Keith’s mottled cheek. He can’t feel the heat coming off his skin with his artificial hand, but the monitor above Keith’s head has his temperature displayed at 103.9 degrees. Shiro’s jaw clenches tensely at the number.

Keith blinks sluggishly at him, his brow knitting as if he’s lost track of what he was saying. His glassy eyes narrow for a moment. “Worrng you I gesss,” he says finally, his heavy eyelids sliding shut.

One side of Shiro’s mouth quirks into a wan half-smile as he brushes the plastered hair from Keith’s heavy eyes. “Worrying about you is in the job description,” he says simply.

Keith’s frown deepens at that, then he winces and draws in a sharp breath, abruptly lifting his head off the bed. He anxiously looks around, as if he’s just now realizing where he is. Shiro’s own anxiety levels start to rise. “Cannwego?” Keith demands, a vaguely pained expression straining his face.

“What? No, Babe,” Shiro says tensely, “you’re not going anywhere until you’re feeling better.” He gently yet firmly captures Keith’s hand just as he’s about to pull the oxygen tube from his nose.

“Calclllus tess cann msss,” Keith insists, growing more agitated as he lethargically tries to tug his hand free of Shiro’s grip.

“It’s Saturday night Keith,” Shiro says flatly, not that Keith is going anywhere on Monday morning either, but this sudden disorientation is scaring him. “I’m sure Professor Holt won’t mind giving you a makeup exam.” He glances at the monitor above Keith’s head. 104.2 his temperature reads. Shiro thinks he should call a nurse. He glances over his shoulder at the nurse’s station outside, trying to catch Hunk’s eye, but his nose is buried in a chart.

“Wusthaasmell?” Keith demands, wrinkling his nose.

Shiro blinks. “I don’t know, antiseptic maybe?” he says, unaware of any lingering scent other than the usual hospital disinfectants, then again Shiro’s sense of smell isn’t what it used to be since his nose was cracked in half. Keith’s always had a stronger sense of smell than he has anyway due to his Galra DNA, so who knows what else is in the air.

Keith groans and clutches his head. He’s trembling all over and his hands are shaking. 104.6 his temperature reads. Shiro anxiously looks over his shoulder and finally manages to catch Hunk’s eye. He startles when all the monitors start going crazy at once and frantically twists his head around to find Keith’s eyes wide open, a look of utter panic on his pallid face.

“Oh God,” Shiro murmurs, immediately recognizing the look on Keith’s face from the ambulance. Keith’s head jerks as he desperately glances around the room. His wide panicked eyes eventually settle on Shiro’s face, silently pleading with him for one awful moment before they roll back into his head and he abruptly starts convulsing again. “Keith!” Shiro cries, impulsively gripping his shoulders.

Hunk comes bombing into the room. He pushes Shiro aside and lowers the handrail on the bed. The young Altean doctor, Allura, rushes in with three more nurses hot on her heels just as one of the monitors starts making an appalling sound and Keith’s seizure abruptly stops. His body goes limp and he falls back against the bed.

“He’s in cardiac arrest,” Hunk calls out, eyeing the offending monitor as he lowers the head of the bed and lays Keith out flat on his back.

“What?” Shiro gasps, his heart leaping into his throat and his vision starting to disintegrate around the edges. 

After that, all he can really hear is the buzzing inside his own head and the harsh sound of his own ragged breathing in his ears. Everything slows to a crawl around him. A slow-motion frenzy of pastel colored medical personnel swarm over Keith’s motionless body, administering medications and attaching wires. Hunk begins chest compressions and Shiro’s hands crawl to his face as his head starts to swim. The whites of Keith’s rolled-up eyes are visible through his half open eyelids and the livid bruises standing out all over his ashen skin give the impression that they’re attempting to reanimate some sort of zombie. 

Allura applies two palm sized defibrillator pads to Keith’s chest. Hunk momentarily stops CPR and she sends a shock to Keith’s sputtering heart that makes his motionless body twitch like a flopping fish. Shiro sags against the opaque wall feeling as if he’s going to be sick. Hunk resumes chest compressions and Allura inserts a tube into Keith’s throat. 

Then Shiro is thrown out of the room. A small determined looking nurse wearing powder blue scrubs gently propels him back out through the open doorway, murmuring something vaguely apologetic as she closes the door in his face. Shiro stands in the hallway and helplessly catches one last glimpse of Keith’s unmoving body before she draws a white plastic curtain over the opaque walls and cuts off his view to the room. 

Medical personnel brusquely push past him in the corridor, hurrying to their rounds. Shiro just stands there blinking at them as a hollow pit opens up in his stomach that threatens to swallow him whole. Next thing he knows, he’s fleeing the building, rushing down the corridor and pushing past the sliding glass emergency room doors. 

There’s a park across the street. Shiro can just about make out a park bench under the streetlights through his tunneling vision. He staggers out into the street, heedless of traffic. Bright headlights nearly blind him as he stumbles out into the night, only vaguely aware of the car horns and raised voices following him. He makes his way to the relative peace of the trees, then lurches over to the wrought iron trash can next to the bench, where he proceeds to vomit up the entire contents of his stomach. 

He can’t do this. He can’t be without him, not again. Twelve-months alone in a Galra prison cell… the torture and the forced combat had been bad enough, but at least when Shiro had been actively fighting to stay alive he’d had something to occupy his thoughts. The nights though, the nights were the worst. Alone in his cell, there’d been nothing to do but think, and he’d thought of nothing but Keith.

He bows his head. Hot tears sting his eyes, running down his face as he dissolves into great shuddering sobs. “Fuuuuck!” he cries. The metal trash container bends beneath his artificial fingers and he springs away from it, scrubbing his tear streaked face and raking his fingers through his buzzed hair. “No, no, no, please Baby, no,” he babbles plaintively, nearly hyperventilating with growing panic. He collapses onto the bench and drops his head into his hands. “Please, no don’t, don’t leave me please. Don’t go where I can’t follow.” 

Sitting in that cell with nothing but the oppressive weight of his own isolation for company, Shiro had come to the realization that he was in love with Keith, and had been for some time. It was Keith’s face that Shiro was staying alive to see again, which was insane of course, because he was going to die in that cell, or in the arena, or in the interrogation chamber. He’d already come to terms with that. Only by some miracle it didn't happen. Instead, he woke up in a hospital bed and the face that had been haunting his dreams for the last year was suddenly sitting right beside him. 

His second life began that day. The one with Keith that he was never supposed to have. Now it was all about to be ripped from him by some stupid random illness. He should’ve known it was too good to be true. He groans and screws his eyes shut, the knot in his chest slowly easing as his gasping sobs dissolve into sluggish tears slowly sliding down his face. 

Nothing matters anymore. Without Keith, there won’t be anything left to live for…

***

He isn’t sure how much time has passed when his eyes suddenly snap open again, but there are birds chirping and a rose colored blush is tinting the horizon. He loses time sometimes when he gets really stressed or upset, goes someplace cold and dark and smothering. He shudders, struggling to draw breath into his paralyzed lungs. A warm hand caresses his shoulder, Keith’s hand. Even now, Shiro can hear his groggy voice softly calling his name. He closes his eyes and manages to draw in a breath, reclaiming his leaden body bit by bit as the crushing pressure in his chest begins to ease and his lungs slowly start working again. 

He draws in a second shuddering breath, his body slumping slightly in relief as blessed oxygen fills his lungs. “That’s it. Just breathe now,” a voice says and Shiro blinks in confusion and looks up to find Allura standing over him, her warm hand gently gripping his shoulder. “How long has it been since you last took your medication?” she asks taking a seat beside him on the bench.

Shiro stares at her, trying to pin down the moment when she’d arrived, but drawing a blank. “I’m fine,” he says automatically. He scrubs his face and Allura doesn’t push. She hands him a brown paper coffee cup with a white plastic lid, Shiro holds up his hand, “I don’t drink coffee,” he says.

“It’s hot-chocolate,” Allura says, “my head nurse informs me it’s supposed to be comforting.”

Shiro swallows, his eyes flickering from Allura’s face to the cardboard cup in her hand. “You’re new to the planet aren’t you,” he says softly, taking the cup. He only asks to avoid the bad news she’s obviously come to tell him for a few minutes longer.

“What makes you say that?” she asks.

Shiro shrugs. “The accent mostly,” he says.

Allura smiles wanly at that. “I was brought to Earth as a child, after Altea was destroyed,” she says and Shiro grimaces in sympathy.

He’d only been a kid at the time himself, but everyone remembers the battle that drew Earth’s troops into the war with the Galra Empire. Shiro would sit in front of the televid for hours, watching vids of the Corps ships taking off in answer to the distress call the Authority had received from the embattled planet. It’s what made him want to become a pilot himself one day, just so he could fly off to some enslaved planet and save the day. God, he’d been so naive back then, as if fighting in a war could ever be that heroic, or clean.

“You lost people,” he says flatly. It isn’t a question. Every Altean living on Earth lost someone in the war. The Corps ships hadn’t arrived in time to save Altea from being destroyed. The best they’d been able to manage was evacuating a few thousand refugees from a planet where millions had once lived.

Allura nods once. “My parents,” she says, her smile turning stoic. “I was raised by my father’s best friend. He’s a wonderful man,” she says, and Shiro can’t help but smile sadly at the genuine look of fondness on her face, “kind, and a bit eccentric. He’s been like a second-father to me, but…” she trails off.

“But no replacement for your real parents,” Shiro guesses. Allura hunches her shoulders in a self-deprecating shrug and Shiro sighs. He eyes the as yet untouched hot-chocolate in his hand and bends the tab back on the lid. His hands are shaking. Of course they’re shaking. He’s avoiding one conversation by purposely having another one. He presses his lips together and digs his medication out of the front pocket of his jeans.

“You were a prisoner of war,” Allura says softly, watching him take one tablet with a swig of hot-chocolate.

Shiro swallows. “What gave it away?” he asks wryly. “The scars, the artificial arm or the anti-depressants?”

“We’d heard that Zarkon’s troops forced their prisoners to murder each other in armed combat,” she says, and the look of pity on her face is almost more than Shiro can bear. “No one wanted to believe it.”

“Believe it,” Shiro says softly, “it’s how I got this,” he says, holding up his artificial hand.

“May I?” Allura asks. Shiro considers for a moment, then he pulls the sleeve concealing his artificial arm all the way up and extends it for Allura’s inspection.

She thoughtfully scrutinizes his artificial fingers for a moment before her lips press into a grim line and her turquoise eyes flash with anger. “What a waste!” she snaps suddenly, “When I think of all the good the Galra Empire could have done for the galaxy with technology like this, if only they hadn't been so hellbent on…”

“Conquering it?” Shiro asks wistfully.

“I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like for you trapped in that place,” Allura says softly, shaking her head.

Shiro finds himself grimacing ruefully. He pulls his sleeve back down and takes another swig of hot-chocolate. “You know it’s funny,” he says, “but my dad never wanted me to join the Corps. We had a big falling out over it on the day I left for Basic. He said I had too much compassion to be a soldier.”

“I never thought of compassion as a weakness,” Allura says.

“Neither did I,” Shiro admits, “but after spending a year on a Galra prison ship, I began to see his point.”

“Your father was just frightened for you,” Allura says, “and looking for any excuse to keep you from going.”

“Maybe,” Shiro murmurs.

“But you’re home now,” Allura says with a wan smile. “He must be overjoyed to have you back.”

Shiro massages the space between his eyes. “He died the day I went missing,” he says almost indifferently. He should probably eat something. His meds are starting to hit him hard. Then again he might just be exhausted from being awake for eighteen hours, “Heart attack.”

“I’m sorry,” Allura murmurs. “That’s the thing about war isn’t it. It makes casualties of everyone, regardless of whether or not they fight.”

Shiro nearly smiles. “Now, you sound like Keith,” he says. Allura’s expression falters at the mention of his name. “It’s okay, I’m ready now. You can tell me what you need to tell me,” Shiro tells her.

Impulsively, she covers his flesh and blood hand with her’s. “We were able to shock his heart back into a normal sinus rhythm,” she says, and Shiro nearly collapses with relief. He’d been so sure that she’d been about to tell him that Keith was gone. Unshed tears sting his gritty eyes as he exhales a long shuddering sigh. All the while he can feel Allura’s troubled gaze upon him.

He swallows. “But?” 

“But, I’m afraid there have been some complications,” Allura says softly, and something in her tone makes Shiro feel as if the ground is giving way beneath his feet…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on the [tumblr](https://radiofreekerberos.tumblr.com/)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up being quite long, so I'm gonna break it up into three chapters.

Shiro wakes up a minute before the alarm goes off. He used to hate that. Now he just lays there, staring at the bright red digital display, waiting for the inevitable buzzing to start. He doesn’t close his eyes, or sigh in exasperation. He doesn't reach across the nightstand and try to preemptively turn the alarm off. He just lays there, indifferently staring at the glowing clock.

There’s no real point in setting the alarm anyway. Visiting hours in the intensive care unit don’t start until 10am, and he hasn't been able to sleep past seven in years. It’s just another part of his routine. Sometimes it seems like routine is the only reason he does anything anymore. 

There’s a part of him that wants to smash the alarm clock against the wall and never get up again, the dark despairing part coiled around his heart like a brooding snake. Its grip on him tightens a little more with each moment he spends separated from Keith.

It’s not the way they show it in the televids. They won’t let him stay all night, sleeping propped up in a chair at his lover’s bedside. They literally throw him out of the room at 7pm when evening rounds start. The rooms are tiny for one thing, and open on three sides, and there’s a critical care nurse on duty at all times. There are no deep bedside chats, no heartfelt declarations of love, just the steady beeping of monitors and the hiss of machines and a person in peach colored scrubs who has to reach around Shiro to administer medications and draw blood and change bags around the clock. Staying the night would only put him in the way longer.

They throw him out during the day as well, whenever they come in to perform some procedure they think he’ll find upsetting. As if he could possibly be more upset than he already is, or would be if he wasn’t self-medicating and effectively shutting down his emotions. They chuck him out every two hours regardless, when they rotate the coma patients, they get rotated like heads of lettuce on the supermarket shelf. Shiro sits in the tiny waiting area and stares at the televid, because it seems less pathetic than staring at the floor or into space, and waits. It takes a while. They have to move Keith carefully due to the EVD catheter in his head and the central line in his chest and the ventilation tube in his throat.

When Shiro is allowed back into the room, he’s always struck by how uncomfortable Keith looks. Even unconscious, his face seems vaguely twisted in pain. The nurses try to reassure him that it’s not true. Keith can’t feel anything in his drug-induced state. He’s at peace, but Shiro knows that face. He knows every inch of it. He knows it better than his own, and he knows what he sees. Keith is in pain. He’s in pain and there isn’t a damn thing Shiro can do about it.

He startles when his phone rings. _Oh God, what’s happened. Keith!_ He paws it off the nightstand, only to realize it’s not ringing. It’s… It’s not his ringtone. It must be Keith’s phone. It’s somewhere in the room, though Shiro has no idea where. He never thought to look for it. The battery must be practically dead by now. He feels inexplicably guilty at the thought.

He suddenly realizes that the clock alarm has been blaring for the last ten minutes. He blinks and turns it off and sits up, tearing the covers apart trying to locate Keith’s phone. It stops ringing just before he locates it on the floor, wedged between the bed and the dresser. He knows the lock code, it’s his birthday. The lock code for _his_ phone is Keith’s birthday. He unlocks the screen and scrolls through the phone log; five missed calls from Kolivan and three from Acxa. 

“Shit,” Shiro murmurs. He never thought to call them, even though he knows Keith’s gotten close to them again since the war. 

At thirteen, Keith was placed with Kolivan and Antok after years of bouncing from one sketchy group home to the next. They’d adopted Acxa three years earlier and she’d immediately appointed herself Keith’s big sister. Keith lived happily with them for four years, and Kolivan and Antok loved him. They considered themselves his parents and from what Shiro has been able to piece together from Keith’s infrequent mentions over the years, so did he. 

They’d wanted to adopt him, but the war broke out and their Galra heritage was suddenly regarded with suspicion. Their petition to adopt was denied. Keith was seventeen by then and received special dispensation from the authority to enlist in the Corps rather than be turned out of the house and returned to a group home. Shiro always thought it ironic, or maybe just cruel, that being adopted into a stable home was considered against Keith’s best interests when going to war at seventeen somehow wasn’t. 

He glances at the battery icon on Keith’s phone. It’s down to five-percent. He winces and scrubs his face. He sucks at this. He’s good at being there for other people, at pushing aside his own problems to help them. He’s always been good at that, too good, but when it comes to letting people into his life or God forbid, asking for help, he just… doesn’t. He keeps it all to himself. 

He knows it isn’t fair to Keith. Circumstances have kept Keith alone for most of his life, but it was never what he wanted. He struggled to find his family again after three years of war had torn them apart and scattered them across the universe. Like Keith, they’d all entered different branches of the military and fought in Earth’s defense during the war. Antok never came back, but Kolivan and Acxa had been searching for Keith almost as long as he’d been looking for them. 

Shiro had never seen Keith happier than the day they finally found each other again. Not even on the day he married Shiro, which took place in the mental ward of the Sierra Nevada Veteran’s Hospital, so that probably explained that. 

Shiro meanwhile hasn't spoken to his own mother in two and a half years. On some level, Shiro believes she blames him for his father’s death, or maybe Shiro blames himself. Either way, there hasn't been more than two awkward words exchanged between them since. That was Shiro’s choice though, He could've reached out to her if he’d really wanted to. He still could. He feels like a heel for keeping Kolivan and Acxa out of the loop. Even if it was unintentional, it was Keith’s decision to make and Shiro is sure he’d want them to know.

He sighs and hits redial on Keith’s phone, mostly because he’s not sure if Kolivan would answer if he were to call from his own phone. Keith denies it, but Shiro knows Kolivan doesn't like him much.

Kolivan picks up on the second ring. “Keith,” he exclaims with obvious relief, “I haven't heard from you in days. I was beginning to worry.”

Shiro swallows, his mouth going dry. He feels very awkward all of a sudden. _Man up Space Ghost,_ he can practically hear Keith’s voice whispering inside his head.

“Little one?” Kolivan ventures hesitantly.

“Kolivan,” Shiro says softly, “it’s Shiro.”

There’s a moment of dead air that seems to go on forever, then “Shiro…” Kolivan says flatly.

“I… should've called earlier,” Shiro continues, “I’m sorry… I didn’t think.”

More silence as Kolivan processes Shiro’s distress. “What’s happened?” he asks finally.

Shiro takes a deep breath. “Keith is… he’s sick. Some sort of massive bacterial infection. They thought it was Meningitis, but it’s a strain they’ve never seen before. They think it might’ve been brought in with the latest batch of refugees.” 

Since the war ended, there’s been a steady influx of displaced refugees from depleted or destroyed planets who have been seeking shelter on Earth and its colonies. Keith volunteers at the Dolores Mission a few nights a week helping to collect food and other essentials for the new refugees who often arrive with little more than the clothes on their backs. His doctors’ think that’s where he may have contracted it. 

“He’s not responding as well to the antibiotics as they’d like,” Shiro goes on, licking suddenly dry lips. “There’s inflammation… in his brain. The doctors’ don't know how bad the damage is yet, but he’s had several seizures.” Shiro sniffs and absently swipes away the tears running down his face. He doesn’t even remember when he started crying.

“Brain damage you mean,” Kolivan murmurs.

Shiro sniffs and swallows past the lump in his throat. “Yeah,” he says. “He’s been put into a drug-induced coma to try to reduce the swelling and limit the damage. They… shaved his head,” he has no idea why he just said that, it’s not relevant to anything, except for some reason Shiro finds it horribly upsetting. Keith doesn't look like Keith without that thatch of unruly dark hair covering his head, beautiful and a little wild just like him. “They inserted a catheter into his head to monitor the pressure, but they don’t know when he might wake up, or if he’ll even still be Keith when he does.” 

Kolivan says something, which Keith’s dying phone buries in static. “What?” Shiro asks, “Kolivan, you’re breaking up.”

“Where is he?” Kolivan asks a little louder.

“Zuckerberg,” Shiro says.

Static again, “—ow are you?”

“I’m…” Shiro hesitates, _fine,_ he’d been about to say. _Just tell him the truth Takashi,_ he imagines Keith whispering in annoyance, “self-medicating,” Shiro admits. He winces, closing his eyes. Yeah, he’s just the sort of prize every father dreams his son will end up with.

“Acxa and I will be there in a few hours,” Kolivan says in a final burst of static. The call drops and Shiro stares at the big empty battery icon for a moment, before the phone dies and the screen goes black…

***

Shiro doesn’t drink coffee as a rule. He finds the caffeine interferes with his medication and keeps him up at night. Since Keith got sick, he’s been up every night anyway, so what the hell’s the difference. He’s forgotten how to sleep alone. He doesn't want to remember what it felt like.

He takes a tentative sip from the grande-latte-caramel-mocha-something-or-other he bought from the kiosk in the lobby. It tastes like shit, somehow bitter and way too sweet at the same time, but he supposes it’s better than walking around like a barely functional zombie. 

Someone is good enough to hold the elevator for him when they see him coming. She’s young and haggard looking, just like everyone he meets in this place. Just like him. It’s as if they’re all part of some horrible club. The in-between club where the lives of the waiting are indefinitely put on hold until the death or recovery of the loved one they’re waiting for. Their membership is clearly stamped in the lines of tension around their drawn lips and the dark circles bruising their eyes. 

“Floor?” she asks Shiro dully, her finger hovering over the keypad next to the closing elevator doors.

“Eight,” Shiro mumbles; the neuro intensive care unit. The girl nods indifferently and stabs the button for him, then she presses the seventh floor for herself; the cardiac care unit. The top floors of the building are reserved for the most critical cases. Floor nine is the Cancer ward, for those unfortunate few who weren’t able to be helped by the new therapies in development since the war. Shiro read recently that Cancer will be eradicated in his lifetime, but the vaccine is still a few years out. It must be a special kind of hell watching someone you love wasting away from a disease that’s about to go extinct. 

Shiro blinks when the doors open. He’s alone. He can’t recall when the young woman exited the elevator. Part of him wonders if she was ever really there in the first place. He falls back against the wall, horrified at the thought. He clutches his chest as rising panic squeezes his heart and turns his lungs to unresponsive chunks of rock inside his chest.

“Shit,” he whispers breathlessly, beads of cold sweat standing out on his face and neck. “Shit, shit.” He slides down the wall, drawing his knees to his chest as the doors slide shut again. He gasps and smacks the emergency stop button to keep the elevator from going back down. The last thing he needs is a doctor or a nurse finding him in this state and sending him over to Psychiatric for evaluation. 

“Stop, stop, stop,” he gasps hyperventilating. He screws his eyes shut and rocks forward, fumbling inside his jacket pocket for his medication. His hands are shaking so violently, he bobbles the bottle and scatters its contents across the floor. “Please, stop,” he gasps, his trembling hands desperately clutching at his stress bleached hair. “Just stop.” 

He claws at the floor, clutching a handful of the powder blue tablets in his shaking flesh and blood fist. His lungs feel as if they’re about to burst and his vision is starting to disintegrate around the edges from lack of oxygen. Blinking tears, he draws the handful of pills to his mouth and almost swallows the entire lot. _DON’T!_ he imagines a voice very much like Keith’s screaming inside his head. It halts his hand mid-movement. _Breathe Takashi, just breathe._

He sobs and manages to draw in a trembling breath, the melting pills in his sweaty palm coming into sharp focus. _That’s it. You’re okay. I’m here._ “Fuuuck,” he breathes, his chest easing somewhat as his hand sinks to the floor. Even comatose, Keith is still managing to talk him down from the ledge. 

Shiro swallows and draws in another tremulous breath, then another. His aching chest slowly eases. He sighs in relief as his lungs start working again and his breathing begins to return to some semblance of normal. It’s the stress, he tells himself, breathing deep even breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth, and lack of sleep. He’s not actually losing his mind. The mental wounds left from his year in captivity have scarred over. He’s in control. 

He covers his sweaty forehead with his artificial hand, the cool composite material calming him as he eyes the ruined melted pills sticking to his flesh and blood palm. He sighs and gathers up the rest of them from the floor, returning them to the bottle and shoving it into his jacket pocket. He slowly climbs to his feet, just now noticing his upended coffee cup on the floor. “Shit,” he whispers, bending down to retrieve it. Miraculously, the lid didn't come off, though a small sticky puddle of flavored coffee had spread from the opening.

Great, now he’s one of those assholes who leaves behind a big mess for someone else to clean up.

He straightens himself up as best he can, tugging on the belt loops of his sagging jeans and smoothing his wrinkled shirt and twisted sweater. Then he squares his shoulders and disengages the emergency stop button. He presses the “Door Open,” button before the elevator can start moving again. A small crowd has gathered in the corridor around it and Shiro takes an involuntary step back before they start pushing past him to get in.

“Everything okay in there?” someone asks; an older man wearing a charcoal gray custodial uniform and tool belt.

“I dropped my coffee,” Shiro says sheepishly, side-stepping an elderly woman and stepping into the corridor next to him, “sorry about that.”

The man shrugs. “No problem,” he says. “You’d be surprised how many people drop shit in the elevator. I suspect it’s because they’ve got a lot on their minds. Don’t worry about it.” He detaches a radio from his belt and calls for a cleanup. Shiro can feel his cheeks burning with embarrassment at the man’s tranquil understanding.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, but the custodian’s already moved on. Shiro watches him enter one of the other elevators, screwdriver in hand. Disgusted, Shiro drops his barely touched coffee into the nearest trash can and takes off in the other direction towards the public restrooms. 

The only other person in there is on his way out when Shiro enters. He’s glad for the solitude. He washes the dissolving tablets from his hand and scrubs his face with a wet paper towel. Then he takes his medication out of his jacket pocket and stares at the amber bottle for a moment.

Kolivan texted earlier that he’d closed down the dojo and would be catching the noon shuttle out of Albuquerque. He’ll be arriving in a couple of hours. He’d also texted that Acxa won’t be able to drive up from LA until tomorrow. She’s in the middle of a big case and needs to bring one of the other associates at her law firm up to speed before she can leave. 

Shiro would rather not be a hot molten mess when they arrive, but the truth is he’s white knuckling it. He’s barely holding himself together, but he can’t let himself break. He needs to be strong for Keith, as strong as Keith’s always been for him.

He grabs his cellphone and dials a number he’s had on speed dial for the last two years.

“Doctor Montgomery’s office,” a pleasant sounding voice answers on the third ring.

“Hey Olia,” Shiro says softly.

“Shiro!” Olia cheerfully exclaims, and Shiro can’t help but smile at the thought of the adorable grin lighting up her puppy dog face. “I’m sorry, was your appointment this week?”

“No,” Shiro admits. “I was kind of hoping for a word, if she’s not too busy?”

“You’re in luck, she just finished her nine-o’clock. Let me see if I can grab her before her next appointment.”

“Thanks,” Shiro says. A moment later Olia’s voice is replaced by the sound of on hold muzak. 

Shiro yawns and rubs his gritty eyes. He doubts he’s gotten more than a few hours sleep in the last few days. But every time he closes his eyes Keith cries out for him in his dreams and Shiro wakes with a crushing feeling of helplessness paralyzing his chest. 

“Olia said you sounded upset,” a different voice this time, a little deeper, a little more mature, Doctor Montgomery, but Shiro just calls her Lauren. He started seeing her two years ago, when he was first released from the hospital and still struggling with some serious mental health issues brought on by his year in captivity. These days it’s just a standing monthly appointment to check in and get his prescriptions renewed, or it had been up until this moment.

“I suppose I am,” Shiro says flatly.

“Talk to me.”

He tells her everything, even the embarrassing parts; everything that’s going on with Keith and everything that’s going on with him. He learned a long time ago that there’s no point in trying to be a hero with Lauren. She always sees right through him. She’s a lot like Keith in that way.

“Do you think it _was_ a hallucination, the girl in the elevator?” She asks when Shiro’s words finally fade to exhausted silence.

Shiro sighs. “She wasn't my dad,” he says softly. 

When he was confined to the mental ward at Sierra Nevada, Shiro used to have long conversations with his dead father. The doctors said it was because the last _real_ words exchanged between them were spoken in anger and Shiro regretted not being able to take any of them back. 

Tears sting the corners of his eyes at the thought, and he quickly swipes them away in embarrassment. “I may have just zoned out and not noticed when she left.” 

“And that was the only thing she said to you?”

Shiro pulls a face. “Well, she didn't tell me to kill myself, if that’s what you’re asking Lauren!” he says tartly, because that’s exactly what she’s asking.

It’s what his dad told him to do. Only it wasn’t really his dad. It was Shiro’s own guilt talking, and his self-loathing over what he’d done to survive. He’d become a killer. He’d killed prisoners whose only crime was trying to survive like him. Shiro was just better at it than they were. After a while, it seemed as if his own life was a small price to pay for the lives he’d taken in return. A chance to balance the cosmic scales and alleviate the guilt that was eating him alive.

So he put his arm through a window in the day room, his flesh and blood arm, it was the only one he had at the time, and tried to cut his throat with one of the glass shards. He would've done it too, if Keith hadn't been there to stop him.

Lauren doesn’t react to his anger. She never does. She’d probably just tell him it was displaced anyway. He’s actually angry with himself for needing help to deal with everything or whatever.

“Have you gone back,” she asks softly. To the ship she means, to the arena, to the interrogation chamber, to his cell.

Shiro closes his eyes. “Not yet,” he says, clenching his jaw so tightly, it aches.

“Are you lying to me right now?”

“No,” he says. 

She doesn't say anything. 

“Well?” Shiro asks, trying to sound wry, though it just comes out as tired and exasperated. “What’s the verdict? On a scale from one to ten, how crazy am I?”

“I don’t believe you were hallucinating in the elevator,” Lauren says thoughtfully.

“But I almost…”

“You stopped yourself,” she says, “and you called me.”

“I’m hearing voices,” Shiro insists.

“One voice,” Lauren says softly, “the one voice you trust more than anyone else’s.”

“And that’s normal is it?”

“It’s _your_ voice, Shiro,” Lauren says. “It doesn’t matter what you call it, the voice of reason, your inner monologue or conscience. It just sounds like Keith right now because it makes you feel better.”

Shiro would argue with that, if he weren't so tired.

“You’re much stronger than you give yourself credit for, you know,” she says. 

Shiro nearly cringes at the irony, because it’s _supposed_ to be him isn't it. Big strong guy, tall and muscular, yet it’s his tiny, whippet-thin husband who’s made of fucking titanium. A part of Shiro is actually glad Keith isn’t aware of how sick he is at the moment, because it would really piss him off knowing that he’d been taken out by something as insignificant as a virus. 

“You’re also stressed and sleep-deprived, and dealing with a lot right now,” Lauren continues, “so we’ll need to make some adjustments to your medication for a while to get you through it.”

“How long’s a while?” Shiro wants to know. 

At his last session, they’d talked about the possibility of weaning him off the meds. That might have scared him once, but things have been so good lately. He and Keith have been discussing the possibility of adopting a child, and doctor Holt just offered Shiro head of Astrophysics after Professor Hamilton retires in the fall. They were happy. They’d finally put the war behind them and were making plans, now Shiro feels like someone’s pulled the rug out from under him.

“Until you get through it,” Lauren says, cryptically. “You’re at Zuckerberg?”

“Yeah,” Shiro says.

“Okay, I’m calling a new prescription in to the pharmacy for you. Give it half an hour before you go down. I’m putting you on a twelve-hour patch for the next ten days, that should help you feel more balanced and less out of control, and Shiro,” she says, “I’m gonna want to see you this week. Make an appointment with Olia before you hang up.”

Shiro sighs in resignation and scrubs his face. He has the feeling his monthly appointments will be going back to weekly for the foreseeable future. “Yeah, okay,” he says softly. He feels like a failure. Logically he knows it isn't true, but he still feels like one…

***

He has to steel himself before he enters Keith’s room. He hates himself for it. The brief hitch in his breathing before he goes inside. The subtle squaring of his shoulders. The schooling of his features into a facade of calm. Shiro loves Keith. He shouldn't have to prepare himself just to look at him, and yet it’s difficult to look at Keith now without remembering him the way he was up until a few short days ago. 

“Hey Baby,” he murmurs, gently brushing Keith’s paper-white cheek with his flesh and blood fingers before leaning in to kiss his damp forehead. Keith doesn’t react of course. The powerful sedation drugs they have him on keep him profoundly unconscious and deathly still, unable even to breathe on his own. The mechanical hiss of the ventilator tube taped to his mouth fills the room. Shiro does his best to tune out the grating white noise and the artificial rise and fall of Keith’s chest. 

He nods to the nurse on duty. He doesn’t recognize her. “How’s he doing?” Shiro asks her. 

“No change since morning rounds,” she says, with a tight, though not unsympathetic smile. Shiro’s jaw involuntarily clenches. No change. He’s beginning to hate those words. 

She hangs a second IV bag on the infusion stand beside the bed. It’s smaller than the other bag and has a red label attached. Antibiotics, they administer them to Keith several times a day through the central IV line inserted in his chest. It’s supposed to circulate the medicine through his body faster, but the infection is proving difficult to treat due to the unknown nature of the bacteria and his Penicillin allergy. 

Shiro waits for the nurse to finish and leave the room before he pulls a chair up beside the raised head of the bed. She won’t be gone long. They’re assigned two patients each and never stray from either of them for more than a few minutes. Shiro lowers the side rail on the bed and takes Keith’s boneless hand in his, careful of the pulse monitor clamped over his finger. 

“I’m here,” he says, gently running his thumb over the back of Keith’s clammy hand. “I’m here.”

He’s still running a fever. There’s a cooling blanket spread over him that looks like bubblewrap filled with refrigerant gel to keep it under control. Shiro looks at the virtual monitor over Keith’s head, 102.1 his temperature reads, marginally better than yesterday. His eyes are also slightly open, which freaked Shiro the fuck out when he first saw him again after the brain surgery. The doctors say it happens sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything. They kept them closed with medical tape at first, but Keith’s eyelids got all red and swollen from the adhesive. Shiro couldn’t abide it. They removed it for his sake. Now the nurses just smear them with ointment every couple of hours to keep them lubricated and Keith’s half-lidded eyes stare unseeing at his feet.

It’s slightly unsettling, but not life-threatening. Not like the other thing. Shiro’s almost afraid to look at _that_ monitor, the one attached to the sensor drilled into the top of Keith’s shaved head. It measures the pressure building up inside his skull from his swelling brain. Five to fifteen millimeters of pressure is considered normal. Keith’s pressure reading has been hovering close to forty-eight for the last thirty-six hours. It’s… bad; on the verge of brain-death, according to his doctors. If the pressure increases to over fifty, Shiro will lose him.

He exhales a long tremulous breath and kisses the back of Keith’s hand. His fingers are swollen. So are his legs. It’s from the drugs. They had to remove his wedding ring. Shiro’s been wearing it on a chain around his neck. They’ve got Keith’s legs and arms wrapped up in compression sleeves to keep his blood circulating. Shiro almost laughs at the absurdity of it, of Keith’s perfectly honed body going so completely wrong. If Keith were awake right now, he’d be so annoyed. Shiro can just imagine the disgruntled look on his face. He’d give anything to see that face, or even the smallest sign that Keith is still in there and will somehow make it back to him.

Shiro rubs his gritty eyes and makes himself as comfortable as possible in the cramped vinyl chair. He loses track of how long he sits there. Keith’s temperature fluctuates a bit, but the ICP monitor remains stubbornly fixed at forty-eight, no matter how intently Shiro stares at it. “Keith, please,” he murmurs, leaning forward to caress Keith’s ashen cheek. “I know you’re…” he falters, awkwardly swallowing past the bitter lump in his throat, “I know you’re tired, but please, just… try,” he says. “Just try, for me, please.”

Two more nurses join the one hovering at the perimeter of the room, and Shiro frowns and rubs his aching eyes. He can tell they’ve come to perform some sort of procedure and are about to throw him out of the room. He gives Keith’s hand one final squeeze before he starts to get up and Keith… flinches, then a bunch of alarms start going off. 

Keith’s body begins to lethargically twitch and Shiro stumbles out of his seat, his stomach bottoming out when he realizes it’s another seizure. Keith hasn't had one since the surgery. It’s strange though, almost as if it’s happening in slow motion, like Keith’s ravaged body is too spent for even involuntary movement. Shiro just stands there and stupidly stares at Keith’s listlessly convulsing body. Clammy dread grips him, crawling up his spine like icy tendrils. His eyes drift to the ICP monitor. The gauge is hovering just above fifty.

Warm hands grip Shiro’s arm; one of the nurses. She steers Shiro towards the hallway as several more nurses and one of Keith’s doctors hurry into the room. “Wait outside,” he tells Shiro with barely a glance in his direction.

Shiro stumbles into the hall and watches them quietly attending to Keith. There doesn’t seem to be any particular sense of urgency in their actions, only a state of calm efficiency. The main focus seems to be on making sure Keith doesn’t hurt himself, or dislodge any of the sensors attached to him. There’s no attempt to stop the seizure. The look of wary resignation on the doctor’s face is somehow worse than outright concern would be, it makes Shiro’s chest hitch with anxiety.

“Shiro?” a deep voice calls from further down the hall, and Shiro turns his head to find Kolivan purposefully striding towards him. A full head taller than nearly everyone else in the corridor, including Shiro, medical personnel give the intimidating looking Galra a wide berth as they scramble to get out of his way. Shiro barely notices. His eyes drift back to Keith’s room where a nurse is drawing white curtains over the transparent glass walls. They’re planning to be in there for a while.

“Why are you standing out here?” Kolivan asks when he reaches Shiro and follows his gaze to Keith’s closed off room. “Has something happened?”

Shiro just looks at him. He doesn't even know where to start…

***

“I should have insisted Acxa drive up tonight,” Kolivan says softly, his big hands clasped in front of him as he sits awkwardly perched on the lumpy waiting room couch next to Shiro. One of the doctors will come and find them when they’re through doing whatever they’re doing in Keith’s room; some sort of evaluation probably, they do a lot of those. Shiro has to fight the impulse to leave. If they’re unable to deliver the bad news, then it’s almost as if it doesn't exist… almost.

“It’s my fault,” Shiro says, staring at his own tightly clasped hands, “I should've contacted you earlier.”

“You were overwhelmed,” Kolivan says flatly. Shiro winces and sags a little further into his seat. “That wasn't an accusation,” Kolivan says. “Anyone would be. Besides, I’m… not Keith’s father. You were under no obligation to contact me.”

While technically true, it still feels wrong. If there’s one thing the war’s taught Shiro, it’s that family isn’t something that can be defined by genetics. Hell, half the families on Earth are found ones now. The more Shiro thinks about it the more convinced he becomes that family is more a matter of heart and mind than blood. “You’re important to him,” he says simply, “that’s all that matters. He’ll feel better knowing you’re here.”

“Will he know, do you think?” Kolivan wistfully asks, or Shiro thinks that what he hears in his voice. It’s always a bit difficult to decipher Kolivan’s expressions due to the vacant nature of his golden eyes. Keith refers to it as resting salt face.

“Does it matter?”

Kolivan’s brow knits slightly. “I suppose not,” he says. He leans back for a moment to give Shiro an appraising look. “You seem much calmer,” he says.

Shiro grimaces and tugs the collar of his sweater down to reveal the clear adhesive patch affixed to his flesh and blood shoulder.

“Ah,” Kolivan says thoughtfully, “this is medicine, is it?”

Shiro just shrugs. “Plus, I have this very strict policy against freaking out in front of other people,” he says wryly. “How do you think I made it through your classes?”

“You always managed to hold your own,” Kolivan scoffs. Shiro thinks he may actually be rolling his eyes. “You were always my best student.”

Shiro chuckles slightly at that. “Only until you started bringing Keith with you to class,” he says, “then I was just another dumbass kid getting his butt kicked like everyone else.”

“Well, Keith’s always been a quick study,” Kolivan says, not quite managing to hide the note of pride in his voice.

“That’s one word for it, I suppose,” Shiro deadpans. Another might be extraordinary. 

Shiro can still remember the first time he saw Keith sparring with Kolivan at the dojo. Even as a child there’d been a self-assured power in his movements that was amazing to watch. Most of the other kids resented his raw talent, Shiro was a little jealous himself, but they still became fast friends, though by all rights they shouldn't have. Keith was so much younger than Shiro. They shouldn't have had anything in common, and yet right from the start there was an almost instinctual short hand between them. An ease of communication that seemed to remain steadfast no matter how complicated the other relationships in Shiro’s life became. 

“I seem to recall your good opinion of me cooling off around the same time,” he says.

“My change in attitude towards you had nothing to do with your abilities as a student,” Kolivan assures him. “It was because Keith had a crush on you.”

“What?” Shiro snorts incredulously. “No, he didn’t!”

Kolivan just looks at him. “I can assure you he spoke of nothing else at home,” he says mildly. “How strong and capable you were, how funny and kind-hearted; it got to the point where Antok wanted to lock him in his room until he turned twenty-one just to keep him away from you, but I convinced him that such things were generally frowned upon outside of fairytales.” 

Shiro can’t believe what he’s hearing. For some reason he keeps thinking of the day he asked Keith to marry him. It happened three days after his suicide attempt. Keith had been sitting with him in his room, though Shiro had been poor company indeed, exhausted from lack of sleep and heavily medicated. He’d been trying to convince Keith to leave him and get on with his life, but Keith had just looked at him with those unlikely eyes of his and said, _You have to get out of your mind before you can come to your senses. When you do, I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere._

Shiro had proposed with his very next breath. A tiny part of him has always been convinced that Keith only accepted because he knew Shiro had no one else to look after him, but maybe he was wrong.

Kolivan smiles slightly at the shocked look on Shiro’s face. “I take it you didn't know?”

“You do realize the only thing I ever wanted from Keith back then was friendship,” Shiro says.

“Which is why I was far more concerned about Keith’s end of the relationship,” Kolivan admits. “I knew that if things were allowed to continue as they were, you’d only end up breaking his heart.”

“I would never have hurt him like that,” Shiro insists.

“And yet, that’s exactly what happened,” Kolivan says, his expression turning severe, or more severe. “I’ve always suspected that Keith was… relieved, at least in part, that the adoption didn't go through, because it gave him the excuse he needed to follow you to war.” Shiro winces. He’d never wanted that for Keith. In fact he’d been pissed as hell when Keith turned up at Basic with the new recruits. “And later when you went missing,” Kolivan continues, “the Corps reported you presumed dead. That’s what they told Keith, that you were dead. I knew then that he would be inconsolable. He stopped writing and I lost track of him, but I still had enough contacts left in the Galra units to know that he’d started volunteering for missions that were far more dangerous, suicide missions.”

Like the one that took him deep into Galra territory to sabotage the fleet’s fuel supply a year after Shiro’s capture. He’d led a small team onto one of their elite cruisers, but instead of stockpiles of concentrated quintessence, they’d found an empty ship full of abandoned prisoners that had been rigged to blow. Shiro had been among them. Somehow, with just one small special-ops stealth ship, Keith’s team managed to get everyone off, but it had been close, too close for Keith. He was the last one out. A bulkhead blew prematurely and he took heavy shrapnel to the neck and shoulder. He was lucky, two inches higher and it would've blown his fool head off, but it still spelled the end of his military career.

“I know,” Shiro says quietly.

“Next I heard, you were back and had married him,” Kolivan says bitterly, still chapped about losing touch probably or Shiro stealing his son maybe, or both. “I take it your feelings towards him had changed in the interim.”

Shiro licks his lips. “Let’s just say a lot of things became clear to me on that prison ship,” he says softly.

Kolivan’s jaw clenches. “I suppose it’ll come as no surprise to you that I was against the match,” he says sternly. “I thought you were too—”

“Old?”

“Broken,” Kolivan says flatly. “I couldn't stand the thought of Keith wasting his life taking care of someone who might never recover.”

_Okay. Ouch._ Still Shiro can see Kolivan’s point. Keith was nineteen when Shiro married him, _nineteen_. He’d had his entire life ahead of him, while Shiro seemed intent on ending his. “Would it surprise you to learn that I told him almost exactly the same thing?”

Kolivan seems slightly taken aback by that. “Really,” he says, “I was under the impression that you were the one who proposed.”

Shiro can feel his cheeks flushing with embarrassment. “I was,” he says, scrubbing his face. “Keith refused to let me let him go, so I decided to hold onto him instead. It was selfish, and I know it isn't what you wanted—”

“Please,” Kolivan stops him, holding up his hand. “I’m trying to tell you that I was wrong. Keith’s been… happy with you, happier than I’ve ever seen him. That’s the only thing I ever really wanted for him.”

“Well, at least we have that in common,” Shiro murmurs, with a wan smile.

Kolivan almost returns it, or at least his expression turns marginally less severe. He straightens suddenly, his enigmatic eyes widening slightly as his gaze fixates on the doorway over Shiro’s shoulder. Doctor Hedrick enters the room and both men stand. Shiro takes one look at the grim expression on his pale face and his throat constricts. He blinks, rubbing his face as tears slowly start to slip from his burning eyes…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on the [tumblr](https://radiofreekerberos.tumblr.com/)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well here it is, my very first multi-chapter fic finished at last! I'm so proud! Thanks to everyone who left me kudos and comments likes and reblogs here and on Tumblr. When I was having those can't stand to look at my own writing days, you guys gave me the confidence to keep going. Thanks again, you rock!!

It’s an unusually cold evening for the Bay Area. Shiro can see his breath as he drives up the coast to Point Reyes. He can feel the biting wind coming off the water. He should probably pull over and put the top up on the car, but he can’t seem to find the energy to care enough about it to bother. 

It’s the wrong time of year for stargazing on an open beach, but he can’t face going home to an empty house again. He can’t look at Keith’s hover bike gathering dust in the driveway, or stare at his things. The post-it notes he left on the refrigerator, the beat up guitar he bought from that second-hand shop in Reno, the sketchpad he keeps in the nightstand, the pile of textbooks stacked in the spare bedroom. All the leftover pieces of Keith’s incomplete life that he’ll never pick up again, and that Shiro will eventually have to face alone.

He pulls the zipper all the way up on the collar of his jacket and huddles a little deeper into his seat. He’s starting to think he should've worn a heavier coat.

He’d felt like a fifth wheel at the hospital. Acxa joined Kolivan yesterday morning and it seemed insensitive to intrude on their time with Keith. They needed to say goodbye in their own way. Shiro didn’t want to take that away from them. So he’d left and somehow found himself driving out to the shore. 

At least the crisp air cleared out the fog that usually covers the bay. For once the bridge was clearly visible from the mainland. Shiro can even see the light station on top of the bluff from Petaluma, which is unusual. Maybe the cold air will clear the cobwebs from his mind as well, help him come to terms with living the rest of his life without Keith.

In some ways, it would have been easier if he’d just died instead of succumbing to the brain death his body stubbornly refuses to acknowledge. That’s Keith though, fighting to his last breath even after all hope of winning’s been lost. Shiro almost smiles at the thought. The irony is that he’s technically recovering. His fever finally broke a couple of days ago and the swelling in his brain has subsided. The pressure inside his head is down to near normal levels. The antibiotics are finally doing their job. It just came too late to save the thing that made Keith, Keith. 

An anti-grav van passes him on the right and Shiro glances up to find a slightly older woman with long blond hair pulled back in a high ponytail checking him out, or maybe it’s the car she’s checking out. He drives a vintage 1969 Mustang convertible. Keith gave it to him for his twenty-seventh birthday. He’d spent months rebuilding it from the ground up from parts he’d collected from junkyards swap meets and garage sales throughout the area. He did most of the work in the aeronautics lab at school so Shiro wouldn’t know and spoil the surprise. 

Shiro used to love the thing. Now it’s just a constant reminder of everything he’s lost. The thought of never again seeing Keith smile the way he did on the day he gave it to him makes Shiro’s chest hitch with grief. He’s seriously thinking about selling the car just to make it stop, but Keith put so much work into it he doesn't think he’d ever have the heart to part with it.

The woman smiles at him before shooting past and leaving him to the slower, nearly empty terrestrial traffic lanes behind her. Ground vehicles aren't rare exactly, but most people prefer faster low maintenance hovercraft these days. Shiro’s a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to his fondness for big loud engines and whitewall tires. Maybe it’s because he spent so much time untethered in deep space, that he prefers to remain firmly on the ground now that he has a planet to call home again.

He turns off at Bear Valley and follows the long lonely road surrounded by sand dunes and scrubby sea grass to the closest parking lot. There are only about a half dozen cars or so scattered throughout it. Shiro pulls into a spot by the overlook and just sits there for a minute, staring at the late afternoon sun brushing the top of the amber water below him. It’s cold, but not as windy now that he’s stopped moving. Shiro doesn't really care. He’s finding it difficult to summon the energy to care about much of anything anymore.

The doctors want him to pull the plug on Keith’s life support. They say it’s just prolonging the inevitable. The scale they use to assess brain damage indicates that Keith’s brain is too damaged to maintain even basic bodily functions. Eventually his heart will stop on its own despite the machines. He’s got weeks at best. He’s completely unresponsive. He’ll never wake up or be able to breathe on his own again. They think he’s completely paralyzed and most likely blind and deaf. They’ve performed several scans to measure his cognitive brain function and recorded nothing but flatlines.

Shiro knows that the doctors are probably right. Keith wouldn't want to linger like this; not really alive, just existing hooked up to machines. In his head Shiro knows what he has to do, but his heart is still having a hard time letting go.

He climbs out of the car and walks down to the beach, finding a spot back near the dunes and far from the rising tide. He takes a seat in the cool sand and watches the sun set over the amber water. The burnt orange sky fades to sepia as the world darkens to shadows and still Shiro just sits there, contemplating the indigo waves gently lapping at the gray shore. Eventually the sky turns to velvet and the stars come out, filling every corner of space with diamond chips of light. The bright arm of the Milky Way cuts a broken swath over his head and Shiro gathers his jacket around himself and lays down in the cool sand to stare at it.

“It’s changed,” Keith says thoughtfully, and Shiro turns his head to regard him. Pale and beautiful in the starlight, Keith’s long legs are pulled up to his chest and his bare feet are half buried in the soft sand. The wind ruffles his long dark hair, the pale starlight painting it in violet. It suits him. Until the nurses shaved his head, Shiro hadn't even realized how long Keith’s hair had gotten. Shiro’s going to miss running his fingers through those soft strands. He’s going to miss so many things.

“Only a little bit,” he says softly. The cosmic map that’s painted the skies above the earth for millennia. It’s been irrevocably changed by the war with the Galra and all the planets they've destroyed. Some of the nearest lights have already begun to wink out of existence, but it’ll take centuries for the full extent of the damage to become known. “Still beautiful though,” he says softly.

“The constellations could change,” Keith says sullenly. He seems upset by the prospect, though it won’t happen for hundreds of years. Keith always did take the war with the Galra pretty personally though.

“Maybe one day,” Shiro says. “I suppose we’ll just have to create new ones.” He can’t help but smile at the thought. “Imagine being the guy that gets that job,” he says wryly.

Keith rolls his eyes. “You can literally find the bright side in everything,” he says.

Shiro’s smile fades somewhat at that. “Not everything,” he murmurs softly.

Keith’s expression turns sheepish. “I’m glad they couldn't take this away from you,” he says.

“Take what?” Shiro asks.

“The stars,” Keith says, looking up at the vastly populated skies above their heads, still enduring despite everything, despite war and greed and the insignificant power struggles of the tiny beings living amongst them. “When you first came back I was afraid you’d never be able to look at them again without going back to that place.”

“The stars helped me escape that place,” Shiro says, sitting up. “I could see them from a panel near the top of my cell. I used to imagine you out there, doing all the things I couldn’t do. Saving all the people I couldn’t save. It was almost like being with you again,” he says smiling wistfully, “almost.” He shakes his head. “Then somehow you were there. You found me, though I still don't know how.”

“Aren’t you the one who’s always saying everything happens for a reason?” Keith asks, one eyebrow quirking wryly.

Shiro truly believed that once; how could he not when it seemed the universe was always going out of its way to bring them back together. Now all he can see are the random acts of cosmic cruelty that keep tearing them apart. “Aren’t _you_ the one who says the universe is out to get us because that’s what it’s there for,” he says flatly.

“Just because _I’m_ a cynic doesn't mean I wanted you to become one too,” Keith grumbles.

“Even if it were true, there’s _no_ reason that could possibly justify any of this,” Shiro says bitterly.

“So that five-hundred years from now some dorky astronomer can discover a new constellation and name it after his cat?” Keith says dryly.

“Not funny,” Shiro mutters.

Keith sighs and settles into thoughtful silence. “I’m sorry I let you down,” he says after a few minutes.

“What?” Shiro startles. 

“You’re mad at me,” Keith says softly.

“I’m…” Shiro sputters. “No, I’m not!”

“You’re mad at somebody,” Keith insists.

Only everybody; the virus that destroyed Keith’s brain. The doctors who couldn't save him. An unfair universe that arbitrarily ruins lives with war and illness. Shiro would punch God in the face if he could. Sell his soul to the devil. Crack the world in half. Anything to keep Keith from slipping away from him. “FUCK!” he shrieks into the uncaring night. “Fuck,” he whimpers, hanging his head. “I just… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” 

“I think you have to let me go,” Keith says softly, and Shiro looks up to find violet eyes watching him with concern. 

“I’m the one who should be apologizing to you,” Shiro says ruefully, because the truth is, he’s the most angry at himself.

“None of this is your fault Shiro,” Keith says gently.

“I wasn't there when you needed me the most!” Shiro cries stubbornly, refusing to be placated.

“Blaming yourself won’t change anything,” Keith insists.

“Maybe not, but it’ll make me feel…”

“Worse?” Keith says sharply. “Punishing yourself won’t change anything either.”

“I can’t just… do… nothing!” Shiro cries.

“So instead you’ll twist yourself into knots until you can’t even think straight, that’s helpful,” Keith says flatly.

Shiro refuses to answer. He stubbornly sets his jaw and looks down at his hands clenched into impotent fists in his lap.

Keith sighs. “Maybe you’re right,” he murmurs softly. “Maybe everything _does_ happen for a reason and we just don’t know what it is yet.” Shiro lifts his head, his eyebrows slightly raised, and Keith suddenly frowns, “Or maybe it’s all dick, I don’t know,” he says with a shrug. 

Shiro just shakes his head. He has no answers to offer either.

“Or maybe the universe is just as inexplicable as the people living in it,” Keith says. “Maybe for every rational decision there’s another one that defies explanation.” He tilts his head slightly. “Like when you asked me to marry you. I still don't know what the hell that was all about.”

Shiro blinks in sudden confusion. “Seriously?” 

“It’s not like you ever showed an interest in anything other than friendship when we were growing up,” Keith says mildly. “Then you were back and the next thing I knew you were proposing,” he shrugs, clearly baffled. “I just figured you were afraid to be alone.”

“You’re right,” Shiro says, “I _was_ afraid.” He’s consumed by sudden guilt at Keith’s misreading of the situation. That’s his fault as well. “But not for the reason you think,” he says. “I’d already wasted so much of my life on that Galra prison ship. I was afraid to waste another second of it not being married to you.”

Keith just looks at him, his expression hovering somewhere between resignation and regret over all the little misunderstandings still somehow coming between them.

“You’re right though,” Shiro says, his throat closing, “I should’ve… I should've told you I loved you more. I should've told you every day.”

“You did,” Keith says simply.

Shiro rubs his burning eyes. “I don’t get it,” he says, his voice thick with unshed tears, “If you thought that was the only reason I asked, then why did you say yes?” 

“Because I love you Dingus,” Keith says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “I’ve been in love with you since I was fifteen.”

Shiro nearly smiles. “Okay, fourteen,” Keith says rolling his eyes, and Shiro chuckles, ignoring the wobbly tears starting to slip from his eyes. “I never really belonged anywhere until I met you,” Keith says softly. “Before that I thought home was a place, but it’s you. You’re my home Shiro.”

“And you,” Shiro chokes out, then pauses for a moment to swallow past the bitter lump filling his throat, “you were my happy ending.”

Keith looks so sad, so utterly bereft that Shiro instinctively knows his time is growing short. He wants so badly to hold him one last time. He wants to take him in his arms and kiss him until it’s all better. But there’s no fixing this. 

“Just promise me one thing,” Keith says.

“Anything,” Shiro sniffs, swiping away the tears slowly sliding down his stubble covered cheeks.

“Promise me you won’t let this be the thing that defines the rest of your life,” Keith says, “that you’ll find a way to be happy again.”

Shiro lets out a shivering sigh. “Oh, is _that_ all,” he says wryly, managing a wan smile through his tears. “Piece of cake.”

But Keith won’t be put off so easily. “Promise me Takashi,” he says obstinately. “Don’t make me come back here and haunt your ass.”

Shiro laughs despite himself. “If it’s that important to you, I promise I’ll try.”

“You’re gonna be okay,” Keith says firmly, and Shiro nearly laughs again because it sounds like an order.

“You’re sure about that, are you?” 

“Yes,” Keith says, eyeing him intently. “You’ll fake it at first. You’ll put on a brave face and feel like a fraud for a while, but eventually it’ll be true. You’ll find your way back, just like you did before.”

Shiro sniffs and scrubs his tear streaked face. “How did you know I would when no one else seemed to? When I wasn't even sure myself?” 

“You were lost,” Keith says mildly. “You just needed some time to find yourself again. I knew if I waited long enough you’d come back to me.” He smiles then, a sad beautiful smile that illuminates his entire face. “Patience yields focus, remember?”

Shiro wakes with a start when a park ranger glides down the beach on a hover scooter holding a virtual megaphone. He stops for a moment to announce that the park is closing for the night, then moves further down the beach, stopping every few yards to repeat the announcement. 

Shiro shivers and slowly sits up. He’s alone. Of course he is. The patch of sand next to him is cold and undisturbed save for his own footprints. He swallows and climbs to his feet. The moon’s come out, half-full and squinting down at him like a glowing white eye. He shakes the sand out of his clothes and slowly trudges back to the car.

He puts the top up and climbs into the drivers seat. Then he just… breaks down. Completely disintegrates. He wraps his shaking hands around the steering wheel and sobs like a baby for the life he’ll never have with Keith; the life that should've been. 

He screams, railing in impotent fury at an uncaring world that has the nerve to go on spinning as though nothing’s happened, as though Keith's presence in it didn't make it just a little bit brighter and a little less cold. As if Shiro’s life hasn't effectively ground to a halt without him.

Eventually he runs out of tears and just sits there in silence, staring into the black night, physically and emotionally exhausted. 

He starts the car and turns on the heat, then he reaches into his back pocket for his phone. The call goes to voicemail like he figured it would. It’s late after all, nearly one in the morning. He waits for the tone to leave a message.

“Hi Mom, it’s… me,” he says softly, numbly, as if all the tears he’s shed over the last few days have finally washed away all of his emotions as well, “Listen, I know it’s late and I’m probably the last person you wanna hear from right now, but I’ve just… I’ve missed talking to you.” He sighs and scrubs his face. “You’re probably gonna delete this message as soon as you get it, but on the off chance that you don’t, I just wanted to tell you that Keith is… he’s sick. He’s… not expected to recover. The doctors want to discontinue his life-support and I’m… gonna let them do it.” He closes his eyes, his chest growing tight. It’s the first time he’s said the words out loud. “I just thought you should know,” he gasps, before hastily ending the call and despondently chucking the phone into the passenger seat.

He gasps a few more times, fitfully raking at the painful ache burning inside his chest with his flesh and blood fingers. He can’t see a way out of this. He wishes Keith was here to reassure him that he’s doing the right thing…

***

Human organ transplantation is more or less a thing of the past. Nowadays they just use the cells from your own body to clone the tissues you need. Since the new organ is yours, there’s no need to resort to outdated treatment options or toxic drugs. As a result, harvesting organs from living donors is only done under very special circumstances. Circumstances such as being an alien-human hybrid with unique DNA that isn't easily replicated in the lab for instance. 

Keith’s doctors spend a considerable amount of time trying to convince Shiro to agree to the procedure. It’s not the donation itself that bothers him. He knows there are people out there who need help, alien hybrids just like Keith whose physiologies aren’t entirely compatible with human treatments. No, it’s the way they spring it on him at the last minute and the fact that it changes pretty much everything. 

Removing Keith’s life support would no longer be an option. He would stay on the ventilator throughout the surgery to keep his organs alive. Instead of passing away in his room surrounded by the people who love him, he would die alone on the operating table during the procedure. 

That’s nearly a deal breaker for Shiro; he can’t stomach the thought of not being there to offer what little comfort he can to Keith in his final moments. Though the doctors insist Keith is too far gone to know the difference. In the end he relents because Keith was so selfless in life, Shiro knows he’d want others to benefit from his death if he could.

Before the surgery can happen, they have to make sure that Keith’s organs are completely free of the bacterial infection that initially sent him to the hospital. So they put him on a stronger course of antibiotics. Keith has a bad reaction to the new drugs; an angry looking rash that spreads over his entire body and swells his eyes shut. Shiro’s appalled; Kolivan and Acxa aren't too fucking happy either. The doctors are initially concerned, but turn fairly indifferent to the situation when their tests reveal there’s no internal inflammation that might jeopardize the surgery.

Then the day before the surgery they swap out Keith’s regular IV fluids with something else that makes his entire body swell up with excess fluid. He looks miserable. Shiro can see it even if the doctors can’t. Doctor Hedrick tells Shiro it’s necessary for tissue preservation. He seems annoyed when Shiro has him paged. He reminds him that Keith can’t feel anything and indignantly stomps out of the room. 

It’s enough to make Shiro want to call the whole thing off. Kolivan and Acxa feel the same way. They’d all agreed to the surgery, Shiro wouldn't have signed the forms otherwise, but none of them had been told it would mean torturing Keith like this. The doctors are efficient and cold. Keith is nothing to them but a cadaver with a beating heart. As soon as they’re done getting what they need from him, they’ll ship him off to the morgue without another thought.

Shiro’s beginning to hate them all.

“I’m so sorry Keith,” he whispers, caressing Keith’s inflamed face with his flesh and blood hand. “This’ll all be over soon,” he says, his throat closing up as he plants a tender kiss on Keith’s forehead, “I promise. Then you can finally rest.”

At some point, Acxa and Kolivan head back to the house for a shower and a few hours sleep before the surgery. Shiro doesn't notice when they leave. He spends the entire night at Keith’s bedside. The nursing staff are at least sympathetic and look the other way. They don't exactly leave Keith alone, but they try to keep the interruptions to a minimum for Shiro’s sake. Shiro tries not to focus too much on the fact that it’s the last night they’ll ever spend together and concentrates instead on catching Keith up on all the news he’s missed since being admitted to the hospital. 

It’s the most normal he’s felt in the last ten days. 

He sits up with Keith all night, holding his swollen hand and rattling on about inconsequential things, how boring the conference was, the cold snap gripping the Bay Area, the promotion he’d never gotten the chance to mention. He yawns and checks his watch and is surprised to discover that he’s almost out of time. The surgical team will be by in an hour to collect Keith. Shiro has until then to figure out some way to say the one thing he’s been avoiding saying, goodbye.

He hears movement behind him. “Takashi?”

Shiro stiffens and turns his head. “Mom?” She’s standing just outside the doorway, as if she hasn't quite made up her mind whether or not to enter the room. “What are you doing here?”

“Did you really think I wouldn't come?” she asks a little too sharply, and Shiro frowns. He’s too tired to fight right now.

“To be honest, I don’t really know what I thought,” he says tonelessly. His head is aching, probably from lack of sleep. He closes his eyes and rubs the throbbing space between his eyes. “You listened to my message,” he says, obviously she did, but this is what their relationship has become. They just circle around each other like a couple of buzzards, stating the obvious.

“I have to admit, I almost didn’t,” his mom says.

Shiro can feel his jaw involuntarily clenching. “What changed your mind?” he asks.

She shakes her head, reluctant to say anything that might make her appear vulnerable. “I suppose I’ve missed talking to you as well,” she admits finally.

“We’ve barely spoken to each other for two years Mom,” Shiro says flatly. “If you missed me that much, you could have called.”

“Or _you,_ could have,” she says tartly.

“Would you have taken my call?”

His mom averts her eyes, her cheeks flushing with color.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Shiro mutters.

She looks up, her eyes momentarily flashing with anger before they shift to Keith’s body laying silent and unmoving in the bed. She averts her gaze almost immediately, visibly upset at the state of him, and Shiro can feel himself beginning to seethe with irrational anger. 

How dare she show up at the eleventh hour like this, feigning distress as if she ever wanted to be a part of his family, as if she actually cares about Keith, or him. He swallows down the bitter taste filling his mouth and for a moment the only sound in the room is the hiss of the ventilator between them. 

“He writes to me you know,” she says softly, refusing to meet Shiro’s eyes, “Neko-chan.”

“Oh?” Shiro scoffs, she hasn't called Keith that since they were both kids. Keith hates it, but other people’s feelings have never factored in to anything his mother says or does. As for writing to her, yeah it seems like something Keith would do, quietly working in the background to mend the rift between them. Even if he did technically go behind Shiro’s back to do it. 

“He keeps me updated on the things happening in your life,” she says.

“Is _that_ why you’re here,” he mutters bitterly, “because you’re about to lose your inside man?” He only says it out of spite. His mother winces and a tiny part of him is actually proud of himself for making her blink first, even though his very next thought is that Keith would be pissed as hell at him for wasting the time he has left with his mother fighting with her.

“I’m here because I almost deleted your message without listening to it,” she says quietly, her eyes dropping to the floor. “When I finally did, I felt so ashamed that I had to come.”

Keith would be saying that she’s offering him an olive branch right now, all Shiro has to do is take it. “What do you want from me Mom,” he murmurs, all the fight instantly draining out of him only to be replaced with a deep bone weariness.

“A second chance, I suppose,” she says softly. 

Shiro sighs. The last words he said to his father were spoken in anger. It took him the better part of two years to get over that. Does he really want to risk traveling the same road with his mom?

“I probably don't deserve one,” she says. “It’s been… difficult for me to let go of my anger.”

“I know,” Shiro murmurs, closing his eyes. “You can’t forgive me for Dad’s death. I don’t blame you, I can’t forgive myself either.”

She startles. “Is _that_ what you think?” she demands breathlessly. “That I blame you for your father’s death?”

“Don’t you?” Shiro says simply.

Her face practically collapses with guilt as she hastily enters the room, closing the distance between them in a few short strides. She comes to a stop at the foot of Keith’s bed, her eyes turning glassy when she pauses to look at him. “They took his hair,” she says mostly to herself, before her attention returns to Shiro, “he’d hate that.”

Shiro nearly smiles. “I know,” he murmurs in agreement.

She tries to smile herself, but after a moment she gives up and sighs instead. “Your father regretted what happened between you, you know,” she says softly, “from the moment you left, he wished he could take it all back.”

“You don't need to tell me what you think I want to hear, Mom,” Shiro says a little indignantly, “I’m a grown man.”

“I’m not,” she insists. The way she says it almost makes Shiro believe her. “I don’t hold you responsible for your father’s death, Kashi-kun,” she says and Shiro almost believes _that_ too. “I blame the war. It killed your father and stole you away from me.”

“I’m right here Mom,” Shiro says wearily, rubbing his gritty eyes.

“Yes, but they told me you were never coming back,” she says. “As far as I knew, you and your father were gone. I thought I’d lost everything.”

“I… cant imagine what that must’ve been like for you,” Shiro says quietly, even though he’s beginning to understand all too well.

“I think you can,” she says, as if reading his mind. Shiro doesn't answer. He rubs his thumb over the back of Keith’s swollen hand and hangs his head, blinking away tears. Suddenly his mom is kneeling beside him. She covers their linked hands in hers. “Then, somehow, Neko-chan brought you back to me,” she says, smiling sadly. “It was like a miracle, but you were so…”

“Different?” Shiro sniffs, one side of his mouth quirking into a watery half-smile. 

“It was as if the son I knew had been replaced by a complete stranger,” she says, shaking her head, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. “I couldn't face what the war had done to you, done to us, so instead I… pushed you away. I’m not proud of it.”

“It’s okay Mom,” Shiro sniffs. He’s never really thought about it from her point of view before. It must have been hell for her seeing him in the hospital, missing an arm, scarred physically and mentally and twice the size he was before he’d left. “I _am_ different. I can’t change that.”

“Of course you are,” she says, gently caressing his cheek. Shiro isn't quite prepared for the tenderness in her touch. It makes him feel like a boy again. “You’ve changed and so have I,” she says. “Maybe instead of getting angry with each other for not being the people we were, we should try getting to know the people we are.” She wraps her fingers more tightly around both their hands. “I think it’s what Neko-chan would want.”

Shiro swallows salty tears and nods. “Yeah,” he says, “I think so too. He’d want us to try at least.”

He hears movement in the doorway and has a moment of panic at the thought that the surgical team has already arrived to collect Keith, but It’s the emergency room staff, the Altean doctor and the big nurse who saved Keith’s life the night he was brought to the hospital. 

Turns out Allura’s been following Keith’s case since he was removed from her care and admitted to the neuro critical care unit. She and Hunk and Lance, the EMT who brought him in, have all come by to pay their respects despite the fact that they all just worked twelve hour shifts and should be headed home for some much deserved sleep.

It’s kind of them, the sort of kindness Shiro had almost forgotten existed. He exchanges a glance with his mom and she excuses herself to find them both some tea. Shiro flashes her a grateful smile and wearily climbs to his feet.

“I wish I could have done more for him,” Allura tells him, after Shiro thanks them for coming.

“I know you did everything you could,” Shiro says, smiling wanly. “It was good of you to check up on him.”

“He was my patient,” Allura says, returning the smile. “Even if it was for only one night.”

“We’re really sorry things shook out the way they did man,” the big nurse, Hunk, says somberly.

Shiro’s smile falters a bit. “Thanks,” he murmurs.

“Lance has been beating himself up for the last two weeks over it,” Hunk says, giving the lanky EMT the side eye.

“What? No, I haven’t,” Lance protests, his cheeks flushing red when everyone’s attention turns to him. He rolls his eyes. “What I _said_ was those Galra robot drivers are the worst. Just try convincing one of those tin cans that a situation is urgent sometime. It’s like trying to reason with a coffeepot,” he grumbles.

At least a coffeepot can’t aim a blaster at your head and actively try to kill you with it, Shiro thinks, but he doesn't say it. The Authority seems determined to put the things to use as cheap labor, but Shiro has seen first hand what they’re capable of. He hopes whoever is reprogramming them knows what they’re doing because he doesn't have the heart to prepare for the machine uprising just now.

“I know you did everything you could too,” Shiro assures Lance. “It’s good to know there are at least some people who still care,” he tries not to sound too bitter when he says it, but he’s tired and beginning to fray around the edges.

“Yes, we noticed that doctor Hedrick had been assigned to Keith’s case,” Allura says pointedly, raising her eyebrows. “Don’t get me wrong, he’s extremely competent.”

“He is,” Lance reluctantly nods in agreement.

“One of the best,” Hunk says flatly.

“You couldn't be in better hands,” Allura says. “However his bedside manner can be a bit… off-putting at times,” she says tactfully, though it’s clear from the knowing looks on all three of their faces that none of them are personal fans.

Just hearing someone else say it makes Shiro feel instantly better. “It’s… fine,” he says. It’s not really, but Shiro’s expectations aren't as high as they used to be. “He’s done everything he can for Keith. I suppose it’s only natural that his focus would shift to the patients who will be saved by the surgery.”

“It’s an extremely selfless thing you’re doing,” Allura says kindly, giving Shiro’s flesh and blood arm a reassuring squeeze. “I hope you know that.”

“It’s what Keith would've wanted,” Shiro says simply, though his throat is threatening to close up again. 

Allura takes a step closer, her brow creasing in sympathy. “That first night in the ER,” she says gently, “when he regained consciousness, he kept asking if you were okay. He was so sick, but all he cared about was you. He obviously loves you very much.”

Shiro appreciates her speaking in the present tense. “Thank you,” he whispers lamely, because the words that adequately express the depth of his feeling for Keith simply don’t exist.

Kolivan and Acxa return then, as stoic as ever, though Shiro can see the lines of tension etched on their faces even if no one else can. His mom is right on their heels. Shiro listens to them quietly catching up with one another as his mom slips a warm paper cup into his hand. 

“Have you eaten Kashi-kun?” she asks him, and Shiro pulls a face.

“I’m not hungry Mom.” 

He can’t actually recall the last time he ate, or wanted to. He glances at his watch and his heart skips a beat when he realizes the surgical team is due to arrive in under ten minutes. The irrational part of him wants to send them away and hold onto Keith for as long as he can, but he knows he has to let him go. He wishes they had more time together. He never found a way to say goodbye.

“We should probably get going,” Hunk says, glancing at the others. 

“Yes,” Allura agrees. “We wouldn't want to intrude on your time with your family.”

They want to pay their respects directly to Keith before they leave, with Shiro’s permission of course. Shiro grants it gratefully. It’s the first time in days that any of the medical staff have treated Keith like a person. 

“Friends of yours?” Kolivan asks, watching Shiro watching the three of them quietly visiting with him. 

“Emergency room staff,” he says. “They were on duty the night Keith was brought in.” Allura’s attention has shifted to the virtual chart hanging at the foot of Keith’s bed. She idly scrolls through the screens as Hunk and Lance engage in a friendly, if one-sided conversation with Keith.

“I see,” Kolivan says absently and something in his tone makes Shiro turn his head to regard him. “You will meet him again, you know,” he says softly.

“You think so?” Shiro says flatly. 

“The Galra believe that once two soulmates have found each other in the first life, they will find each other in every life that follows.”

“Doesn’t really make living _this_ life any easier though, does it,” Shiro says bitterly. 

“No,” Kolivan admits.

A team of surgical techs wearing multi-colored scrubs appears in the doorway and Shiro’s stomach bottoms out. He gasps, clutching thin air when his legs abruptly turn to jelly. Kolivan quickly grabs him around the shoulders and props him up with one long arm to keep him from going down. 

“Kashi-kun!” His mother anxiously yelps as Acxa springs forward and deftly removes the cup from Shiro’s flagging hand before it can spill all over the floor.

“Easy, easy, easy,” Lance says, rushing over to help, “deep breaths.” He checks the pulse at Shiro’s wrist. “You look like you’ve lost weight,” he says, frowning deeply. “When’s the last time you ate?”

“I’m okay,” Shiro insists, momentarily blinking stars. He finds his legs again after a few deep breaths. Kolivan drops his arm, though Lance keeps a steadying hand on his shoulder. “I’m okay,” Shiro says more firmly and Lance reluctantly releases him. 

Things start moving really fast. The nurse in charge of the surgical team promptly banishes everyone to the waiting room. They’ll return Keith’s things to Shiro after the surgery. He won’t see him again until the memorial service. Shiro just… needs a moment to catch his breath. 

The surgical team is swift and efficient. They quickly remove the various monitors attached to Keith’s swollen body and prepare the portable ventilator for transport. They’re practically on their way out the door when Allura suddenly looks up from Keith’s chart, her complexion visibly paling. “Stop!” she commands them. “Stop what you’re doing! Get his doctor in here now!”

Shiro falters. “What is it?” he asks, hovering just inside the doorway ahead of the surgical team. The look of horror on Allura’s face gives him goosebumps. A shiver runs down his spine and he plants his feet, blocking the surgical team’s way. He’s uncertain if he should feel hopeful or anxious at the unexpected delay.

“We’re on a tight schedule, doctor,” the head nurse, a spindly Olkari woman says very patiently, as if she’s used to dropping everything on the whims of demanding doctors all the time.

“Please, Ryner,” Allura says, her tone softening, “look at the scans.” She extends the virtual screen with a swipe of her finger.

“What’s up?” Hunk asks, immediately joining them in front of the virtual screen. His lips press into a grim line as Ryner begins scrolling through the images.

Shiro and Kolivan exchange a glance, then muscle their way back into the room. The techs quickly step aside, clearly intimidated by their size and the displeased looks on their faces. Everyone crowds around Keith’s bed, straining to see the brain scans filling the virtual screen. Everyone except Shiro, the scans just look like a bunch of wavy lines to him. He stands by Keith’s side and takes his hand, grateful for any extra time he can get with him, no matter how fleeting it may turn out to be.

“Doctor Hedrick noted it as seizure activity on his chart,” Ryner says thoughtfully, though the puzzled frown on her face seems to tell a different story.

“Mmm I don’t think so,” Hunk says, shaking his head, “the wave frequency would be more consistent and you wouldn't see so much deviation in amplitude.” 

“This isn’t a seizure,” Allura agrees. “I’ve seen this before Ryner, and I know you have too.”

Ryner’s frown deepens into a scowl. She tells one of the techs to have doctor Hedrick paged. Shiro watches her leave from the corner of his eye. This is all Greek to him, but it’s clear they believe some sort of mistake has been made. He tightens his grip on Keith’s hand. “ _What_ have you seen before?” he asks, forcing himself not to hold his breath while he waits for the other shoe to drop.

“This isn't brain death,” Allura says without any dissembling. “It’s Galra hibernation.”

“What?” Kolivan startles, his eyes going wide.

Shiro has no clue what that is. Keith’s unknown parentage has always made his Galra ancestry something of a mystery to both of them. It doesn’t matter, the only thing Shiro’s concerned with at the moment is the not brain dead part of the equation. “Wait…” he gasps breathlessly, he may need to sit down. “Are you … Are you sure?”

“Quite sure,” Allura says.

“We could run another scan just to be certain,” Lance suggests, and Allura nods.

“Do it,” she says and Hunk and Lance immediately confiscate one of the disconnected monitors to set up the test. 

Shiro just stands there like an idiot, watching them attaching electrodes to Keith’s head. All the while the same thought keeps spinning around his head. Keith’s not brain dead. He’s not brain dead. He’s not dead, but he would've been if Allura hadn't intervened at literally the last possible second. 

He feels like he’s going to be sick. 

“What’s Galra hibernation?” Shiro’s mom finally asks. 

“There have been isolated cases where an individual Galra spontaneously healed from grievous injuries after entering a prolonged period of sleep,” Kolivan says.

“And yet it never once occurred to you to mention this before?” Shiro asks sharply.

Kolivan involuntarily straightens to his full imposing height. “The ability is rare among my people and Keith is only half-Galra,” he says haughtily. “I had no way of knowing this would happen.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Allura quickly intervenes, glancing at both of them. “Why would you? This is something his doctor should have caught.” She keeps her tone soothing for Shiro’s sake, but he’s not angry with Kolivan, not really. He’s just exhausted and sick of the universe making him its bitch.

He sighs and rubs his burning eyes. “So…what… does this mean exactly?” he asks, afraid to get his hopes up. He trusts Allura, but not brain dead is still a far cry from awake and able to live a normal life. “Is it possible that the damage to Keith’s brain might reverse itself?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” Lance says thoughtfully, staring at the virtual monitor he and Hunk are using to run the scan, “but there’s definitely _something_ going on inside that head.”

Shiro doesn't move, anchoring himself at Keith’s side out of the irrational fear that Keith will somehow disappear if he takes his eyes off of him for even one-second. What if none of this is real, the black snake coiled around Shiro’s heart whispers insidiously. What if the strain of losing Keith was simply too much for his patched together psyche to take and he suffered some sort of mental collapse without even realizing it. What if the last ten minutes have been nothing but his mind’s desperate need to create a fantasy of wish fulfillment. 

Shiro closes his eyes and draws a deep breath in through his nose and out through his mouth. “Wake up,” he whispers. Half of him thinks he’ll come to on the floor, with his mother standing over him and Lance’s finger on his pulse, but when he opens his eyes nothing has changed. Everyone in the room is still crowded around the monitor and Allura is staring directly at him.

“You’re all right,” she tells him softly. “It’s a lot to process I know, but judging from the activity on this latest scan, I’d say his brain _is_ attempting to repair itself.”

Now Shiro needs to sit down. He lowers the handrail and sags onto the bed facing Keith. They ended the antibiotic treatment a couple of days ago. Keith’s rash has started to clear up, but his eyes remain swollen and his body is still bloated with water retention. Shiro wonders if his brain has recovered enough to register pain. The thought makes his stomach turn. “Will he… remember me?” he asks softly, swallowing bile.

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that,” Allura says softly. “I’m not a neurologist. I can tell you that memory loss is common with this type of illness,” she says. “There’s every possibility it may only be temporary, but you should prepare yourself for the chance that it won’t be, and for the possiblity that there may be other physical and cognitive deficits as well.”

“But, he _will_ wake up?”

“Yes,” Allura says. “It may take a few days for him to regain full consciousness, but he’s already starting to come around.”

It’s enough for now. 

Doctor Hedrick arrives then, spitting bullets. Shiro doesn't even turn his head to look at him. “Why hasn't this patient been brought to the O-R Yet?” he demands. “There are eight other people whose lives are depending on this surgery!” Then everything fades to awkward silence when Shiro assumes his eyes fall on the still in progress brain scan running on the virtual monitor above Keith’s head. “Is that…” No one says anything and Shiro still doesn't turn around. He concentrates on Keith’s inflamed face. His eyes have started moving beneath his eyelids, as if he’s dreaming or more likely having a nightmare. “You’d better tell the transplant team to stand down Ryner,” doctor Hedrick says softly. “It would seem these organs are still in use by the original owner.” 

Epilogue:

Two days later, Keith opens his eyes. Shiro’s asleep when it happens, though he doesn’t mean to be. It’s because the room is so quiet. The new doctor moved Keith to a private room after he started breathing on his own again. The nurses stop in throughout the day to check on him, but it’s not like in the ICU where they were constantly throwing Shiro out of the room to perform invasive tests and procedures. 

They’re done with those thankfully. After a brief surgery to remove the sensor from his head, Keith has largely been left alone to rest and recover. It’s been a huge relief for Shiro, since no one makes an issue of him staying past visiting hours anymore. His mom and Kolivan and Acxa have been crashing back at his place, but Shiro hasn't left the hospital since Keith was moved.

He doesn't want Keith to wake up alone, but without someone literally upending him from his seat every couple of hours, or the hiss of the ventilator to keep him awake, Shiro’s body eventually shuts down and he face-plants onto the bed with his flesh and blood fingers curled possessively around Keith’s slightly swollen hand and his forehead resting against Keith’s bony hip. 

He wakes with a start when unsteady fingers start tentatively carding through his hair, sending him slamming bolt upright against the back of the chair. He rubs the sleep from his red-rimmed eyes and blinks owl-eyed at Keith, who’s staring back at him in exhausted silence. 

Shiro’s afraid to say anything. None of the doctors could tell him what to expect. Not even the new one, a hybrid specialist they called in on Allura’s recommendation. Then Keith flashes him a reassuring smile, though he’s barely strong enough to lift his head, and Shiro can tell by the look in his eyes that he’s still in there. He’s still Keith. 

“Hey, Baby,” Shiro murmurs, weak with relief. He grins, absently swiping the relieved tears from his eyes as he lowers the handrail on the bed and climbs in next to him. Keith sags against him and Shiro gingerly puts his arm around him, careful not to disturb any of the various IV lines and sensors still attached to him.

Keith breathes a contented sigh and scrunches his face up around the oxygen tube in his nose. He looks as if he’s trying to scratch it, but he seems to be having some trouble getting his hands to do what he wants them to. It’s almost as if he’s drunk. His hands are shaky and his movements are clumsy. The new doctor said his coordination might be affected. Shiro presses his lips together and takes Keith’s unsteady hand in his. “Itchy?” he asks.

Keith wearily tilts his head. The rash covering his body has faded to a less angry looking rust color, but it’s obviously bothering him. The nurses gave Shiro a prescription for anesthetic ointment. He hasn't filled it yet. He gives Keith’s red nose a tender brush with his lips and Keith grunts and smiles. 

Keith licks his lips and swallows in what looks like considerable pain. The doctor said his throat would be pretty beat up from the breathing tube. “Are you thirsty? You want some water?” Shiro asks, and Keith grimaces slightly and shakes his head. He hasn't tried to speak. It might be too painful for him. He might be too tired, or he might need some time to find his voice again. Anything's possible according to the new doctor. She’s kind of a weirdo, but seems to know what she’s doing. Shiro thinks he may even end up liking her.

He should call a nurse. Of course he should. They’ll want to page the doctor. She’ll want to examine Keith. Run tests on him. Evaluate his condition. But before that happens. Before their lives become a series of tests and medications and therapy appointments. Shiro just wants a moment alone to breathe and enjoy being with his small, stubborn, powerful, remarkable husband who punched death in the face just to come back to him.

Keith lays his head on Shiro’s chest and Shiro smiles and leans in to kiss the dark hair covering it like peach-fuzz. “I'm here,” he says softly. “I’m not going anywhere.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Find me on the [Tumblr](https://radiofreekerberos.tumblr.com/)
> 
> What I was listening to while writing this fic:  
> Bridges (Stripped) - Aisha Badru  
> Love You Like That (Acoustic) - Dagny  
> Fade - Lewis Capaldi  
> Glass House - Morgan Saint  
> Old Friends - Jasmine Thompson  
> Leave a Light On (Acoustic) - Tom Walker


End file.
